


The Black Hands of NERV

by bissek



Category: Neon Genesis Evangelion, Noir (Anime)
Genre: Action/Adventure, Crossover, Crossover Pairings, Espionage, F/M, Long Lost/Secret Relatives
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-08-06
Updated: 2015-08-06
Packaged: 2018-04-13 05:18:07
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Major Character Death
Chapters: 29
Words: 177,140
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/4509291
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/bissek/pseuds/bissek
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>What if Shinji had a twin sister named Kirika? What if Asuka had a cousin named Chloe?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Shattered Dreams

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion, nor do I own Noir. If I did own Noir, I would have had the subtitlers add a note in the opening credits explaining who the heck Coppélia is. You shouldn't need to consult Wikipedia to understand the theme song of a TV show.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter One

Shattered Dreams

"Due to the present emergency, phone service has been shut down. Please make your way to the nearest shelter…"

Shinji listened to the automated message repeat a few times, and then hung up the pay phone. Having no idea where the nearest emergency shelter was, he walked to the nearest bench and sat down. He would just have to wait for his ride to show up. As he sat and waited, he pulled the two messages he had received in the mail a few days previous and thought about their implications.

Most boys his age would have passed over the coldly direct letter from Shinji's father in favor of ogling the semi-risqué photograph of the purple-haired woman (with an arrow pointing directly towards the risqué portion) with the note 'I'm coming to pick you up' written on it. But to Shinji, the flat statement of 'Come to Tokyo-3. I have a use for you' represented something that nobody other than him could possibly infer from it.

Hope.

Shinji still remembered the terrible day ten years previous when his mother walked into a strange device and never came out again. While everyone fussed over their instruments trying to figure out what had happened to Yui Ikari, ignoring her two suddenly orphaned children, the only one that Shinji could turn to for support during that living nightmare was his sister, and the only person she could turn to was him. The two children, already close, had clung to each other as their only support in a world that had suddenly been torn apart. But a few weeks later, their world went from being torn apart from being ripped to shreds without any warning.

Shinji's father had arranged for him to be taken care of by an uncle. But when Shinji wanted to know why Kirika wasn't coming with him, all that Gendo said was "I still have a use for her. You are of no use to me."

That was the last time that Shinji saw his sister. There had been no contact between the siblings of any kind since. His uncle wouldn't even let the boy find out what his sister's mailing address and phone number were. For ten years, Shinji had prayed that one day either his sister would no longer be useful to his father, and be sent back to him, or that he would somehow become useful, and be allowed to come back to her. Now, after all these years, Shinji's dream had come true. He didn't know what use his father had for him or his sister, but as long as it enabled them to be together again, he didn't really care.

Shinji's wandering thoughts on the subject of his long-absent twin were interrupted by the sound of passing jets. Looking up, he was suddenly learned what the 'emergency' that the automated message spoke of was about.

The thing was large, green, and extremely ugly. It looked for all the world like some kind of kaiju out of a Godzilla movie. Like in those movies, it appeared that the military was throwing everything they had at it. Also like in those movies, the most that this did to the monster was mildly annoy it. The monster shrugged off the effects of the missiles and shells thrown at it, swatting aside any planes and helicopters that got into arm's reach like they were gnats. After a few minutes of watching, Shinji realized that the battle was heading his way. Fortunately, before it got close enough to make giant feet or flying debris a major safety hazard, a blue sports car screeched to a halt near him. It was being driven by the woman who was on the risqué photograph.

"Shinji? Get in the car, NOW!" The woman yelled. Shinji quickly complied, not wanting to be flattened by the monster or pieces of the things that the monster was destroying. This turned out to be a wise decision, as a shattered fragment of a building smashed into where the train station had been moments after the car had pulled out.

Shinji had never been on a roller coaster, but he imagined that doing so would be similar to this particular car ride. The woman who was driving treated the maximum speed limit as if it was the minimum, swerved around the wreckage caused by the failed attacks on the kaiju like a fighter pilot taking evasive action, and seemed to believe that braking before turning was a cardinal sin. The nightmare ride went on for several minutes, knocking Shinji all over the car while he struggled to get his hands on the seatbelt. Just when he had managed to get hold of it, a large plane screamed overhead. The driver noticed the car and promptly screeched to a halt.

"They're using an N2 mine!" She cried, "Get Down!" With that, she dove on top of him. Moments later, a massive shockwave hurled the car down the street. As the car flew down the street, Shinji barely had the time to think _Sayonara, imouto-chan…_. Then his head struck the side of the car and he blacked out.

* * *

Shinji woke up a few minutes later. The car had rolled so that it was resting on the passenger side. As he climbed out of the car, he heard the women shouting.

"This is just great. I still have payments on this car! My dress is ruined! ARRRGGH!"

Shinji climbed down to the ground and asked the woman who she was.

"Oh, I'm sorry," She said, "I didn't get a chance to introduce myself. My name's Misato Katsuragi, Chief of Tactical at NERV."

"NERV? Is that where my father works?" Shinji asked.

"More like NERV works for him. Commander Ikari is supreme commander of NERV. Now help me right the car. That N2 mine probably didn't finish off the Angel, and I'd like to get out of here before it comes back."

Not wanting to be stomped by a kaiju (which was apparently called an Angel for some reason), Shinji helped push the car back onto its wheels. There was an additional delay while Misato looted a hardware store for a new battery and enough duct tape to hold the car in an approximation of its original shape. As Shinji buckled himself in, Misato pulled a booklet entitled 'Welcome to NERV' out of the glove compartment and handed it to him. Then she gunned the engine and returned to the high-speed act of vehicular lunacy that she apparently considered a normal driving habit, tearing down the highway towards the nearest entrance to the underground facility known as NERV headquarters.

* * *

It had been over half an hour since Shinji had arrived made it to the Geofront and entered the NERV base. At first he followed Misato while keeping most of his attention on the introductory booklet he had been given (Which seemed to contain more PR buzzwords than actual information). However, after he finished going through it, he started looking around as he walked. It soon became apparent that either the facility had a large number of identically furnished corridors, or they were going in circles. Soon the two had been wandering the halls of NERV for an hour. Shinji started wondering if he'd ever see his sister again or if he'd be stuck in this endless maze for the rest of his life. Fortunately, rescue arrived in the form of a blond woman wearing a swimsuit, a lab coat, and a rather annoyed expression.

"Did you get lost _again_ , Misato?" The woman demanded.

"Eh, heh…" Misato tried to come up with some kind of excuse, and failed.

"We're in the middle of a crisis here, Captain. We don't have time for you to wander around in circles. Is this the Third Child?"

Shinji wondered what the woman meant by Third Child. The last he checked he was the firstborn child out of two.

"Yes, this is Shinji." Misato replied.

"Alright Shinji, I'm Ritsuko Akagi, head of Research. Please come with me." With that, Shinji was lead off by the blond. Fortunately, the blond appeared to know where she was going.

It took no more than five minutes to get from the point that Misato had passed at least eight times in the past hour to the point Ritsuko was trying to reach. Their destination was a hangar bay, containing an enormous purple robot.

"What is that?" Shinji wondered. It certainly wasn't in the highly unhelpful introductory booklet.

"That is what NERV has spent the past several years building – the ultimate fighting machine – Artificial Human Evangelion Unit 01."

Another person entered the room. It was Shinji's father.

"Dr. Akagi," He said, "We're moving out."

"But Sir, we don't have a pilot!" Misato protested

"The Third shall pilot."

"But it could take months before he's able to synchronize enough to fight!"

"All he has to do is sit in it. We can handle things from there."

Shinji listened to his father's statements and Misato's objections. He now knew what use his father had for him. In order to defeat the kaiju, they needed a mecha-kaiju. And in order to make it work, he had to pilot it. Given the way that thing had crushing all of the forces that had been sent against it, doing so was near suicide. But as he stared at the purple monstrosity, his mind kept coming back to an image of a little girl with a mop of untidy black hair and brown eyes.

He had been separated from his sister because she was useful to his father and he was not. Because of this machine, he was useful again. If piloting the Evangelion was the price he had to pay to be reunited with Kirika, then he was willing to pay it. He stepped forward.

"I'll do it."

* * *

Shinji was quickly shoved into an entry plug and the Evangelion was prepped for launch. Unit 01 was then sent to the surface of Tokyo-3.

"Alright, I'm out. What do I do now?" Shinji's voice asked over the com system.

"Try to focus on walking for now, Shinji." Misato replied.

"Synchronization at 41.3. Impressive for a first attempt." Ritsuko commented.

"Let's hope it's enough."

The two watched on the bridge monitors as EVA-01 started to walk shakily across the city. They cringed as they saw it stumble a few times, but fortunately Shinji was able to correct himself before he actually fell over. Soon Shinji had enough control over the robot to move it about without stumbling. Just in time, as the Angel had recovered from the N2 attack and was re-entering the fray.

The Third Angel and EVA-01 stared each other down from over a mile away. Then the eyes of the Angel started lighting up. Before Misato could tell Shinji to dodge, EVA-01 had already leaped to the side, narrowly avoiding a beam of light that created a cross-shaped explosion. As a means of escaping an attack, it worked. However, the dodge wasn't well coordinated, and the EVA rolled and skidded down the side street it had dodged down, tearing up the pavement as it went. The EVA then slowly and painfully climbed to its feet.

"Shinji, there's a progressive knife in a holster on the EVA's shoulder. Use that to fight the Angel." Misato called out.

After some fumbling, Shinji managed to find and draw the knife. Then he started towards the Angel. The Angel raised its hand and a large spike extended from it. Shinji dodged to the side and continued his advance. When the Angel repeated with its other hand, Shinji dodged again, but overcompensated and crashed into a building. The Angel then proceeded to take advantage of this and leapt onto its fallen foe and started pounding on it. Shinji tried stabbing it with the knife, but the blade bounced off a field that appeared in front of the Angel.

"Shinji, the Angel is using its AT field to defend itself. You need to use the EVA's AT field to neutralize it before you can beat it." Misato's voice called.

"HOW?" Shinji called back.

Ritsuko looked at Misato. "This is what we get for using a rookie pilot. He doesn't have the slightest idea what he's doing. We should have brought him in for training earlier."

Shinji managed to get a knee up and kicked the Angel off of his EVA. He staggered to his feet. His EVA had scored and cracked armor all over it. The Angel was still unharmed. From a purely objective point of view, it seemed that all was lost. However, Shinji's view of the situation was far from objective.

_I can't lose. I can't let myself lose to this thing. Kirika's waiting for me to come back, I am GOING TO SEE HER_ _**AGAIN!** _

With a roar of rage, Shinji charged at the Angel. It only managed to get off one attack before the EVA closed, which was swiftly evaded. The EVA then proceeded to pound and stab its enemy repeatedly, knocking it all over the city.

"He's really giving it to the thing, isn't he?" Observed one of the bridge bunnies.

"Unfortunately, he still hasn't penetrated the AT field. He may be knocking it around, but he isn't actually hurting it." Replied Ritsuko.

In the end, it was the combination of Shinji's swift reflexes and poor training that took him down. He was able to tell when the Angel was about to attack him, but couldn't properly judge how far he needed to dodge. He kept either overestimating, and having to recover from the spills he took while doing so, or underestimating, and taking a glancing hit. After the first time that Shinji overestimated a dodge during his offensive, the Angel gained enough time to start a serious counteroffensive. An underestimated dodge of the Angel's laser took EVA-01 in the hip, bringing it down to one knee. The Third Angel knocked the EVA to the ground a second time, this time taking care to pin its legs. In desperation, Shinji thrust his knife forward one last time, continuing to press forward even after hitting the AT field. By sheer chance, he managed to figure out how to activate the EVA's AT field during this final stroke. The knife penetrated the field far enough to embed itself in the red orb on the Angel's chest. As Shinji twisted the knife, the Angel screamed, and then it abruptly exploded, driving the EVA further into the pavement.

"Pattern Blue signal has faded. Target is destroyed." Came the call from the sensors board.

"Entry plug reports that the pilot is unconscious." Came another call.

"Stand down from alert. Send a retrieval team out to recover EVA-01. Medical unit standby to treat the pilot on recovery." Misato ordered.

* * *

When Shinji woke up, he was in a hospital bed. His body ached all over. When he tried sitting up, his head started spinning. He lay back down on the bed, and decided to rest until the pain went away. In his mind, the same thoughts kept occurring to him over and over.

_I did it. I won. I'm useful to Father now. Now we can be together again._

After a couple of hours, Misato showed up. By this time, Shinji's body had stopped aching enough that he could sit up in bed. After some mild small talk, Shinji brought up the question that was foremost in his mind.

"Could I please speak with Kirika?"

"Kirika?" Misato sounded honestly confused about the question.

"My sister. I'd like to see her."

"I didn't know that your guardian was caring for any other children. I'll get in touch with him for you."

"No, when Father sent me off to my uncle, he kept her here. I need to see her, _please_." Shinji's tone was getting panicked.

"I didn't even know the commander had a daughter. There's only one person that he acts as guardian for, and her name isn't Kirika."

At that moment, Shinji's world came crashing down. The dream he had been holding onto for a decade had just turned out to be nothing more than an illusion. Either Kirika had outlived her usefulness, or this other girl had shown herself to be more useful, and Kirika had been cast aside. His fa- no, _the Commander_ hadn't even cared enough to send his discarded children to the same place, or even to send a note letting them know how to reach each other. Shinji cradled his head in his hands and wept.

* * *

On the same day that Shinji had his illusions of a family reunion shattered, a black haired, brown eyed girl living in Paris was having illusions of her own shattered. Nobody knew the girl's real name – the girl didn't know it herself – but she answered to the alias of Kirika Yumura.

Kirika knew nothing of her past. All she knew is that one day a few months previous she woke up with no memory of who she was, where she came from, or how she had gotten where she was. Searching the apartment she woke up in, the only physical clues to her identity was a student ID card with her 'name' printed on it and a musical pocket watch. The only clues to her past were a sense of connection to a certain woman and to the word 'Noir'.

Shortly after starting to attend classes at the school the ID came from (where she had apparently been going for some time before her sudden memory loss), people started trying to kill her for some unknown reason. At this time, Kirika learned something else about herself.

She was extremely good at killing people. She could do it swiftly, efficiently, and without a shred of remorse.

After a few attacks from these unknown attackers, Kirika managed to track down and contact the woman, an assassin named Mireille Bouquet. After the two of them exterminated yet another attack from these attackers, they had become partners, operating under the codename of Noir.

Since then, the two had traveled the world, hunting down terrorists, criminals and corrupt officials on commission from those they had wronged. All the while, they searched for information on the people who were trying to kill them, a shadowy organization known as Soldats.

During those journeys, Kirika also tried to find any leads that might lead to her discovering the secrets of her lost past. Did she have any family? Did she have any friends? Did they miss her? Where had she learned how to kill with such ease? Had she any other interests when she was younger other than death and how to bring it about?

In an attempt to find something to occupy her time other than death and the unfathomable mysteries of her past and her mysterious enemies, Kirika had tried to take up painting as a hobby. While working on her first painting, she had gotten to know a painter named Milosh, who was also painting a landscape of the same view. Milosh ended up being the first real friend that she could remember outside of Mireille, someone who had no connection to the dark life that she lived, someone she could talk to and pretend to be a normal person around for a little while. Mireille hadn't approved of the friendship, but Kirika kept it up anyway.

That had been about a week ago, and Kirika had discovered exactly why her partner had said that she should stop seeing him. Christian Galle, an enemy of Mireille's from before they had become partners, had come looking for revenge. Having survived his first fight with Noir while seeing both members of the team, he tried a more indirect method of assault. Recognizing Kirika walking alongside Milosh after a morning of painting, he had the painter gunned down in a drive-by shooting, killing the man for no reason other than the fact that he was the friend of a friend of an enemy.

Galle was dead now – killed by Kirika's hand. But that wouldn't help Milosh. Glancing at the sketchbook holding the first painting that she had ever made, Kirika wondered if she'd ever be able to paint another landscape without being haunted by the ghost of the friend she'd inadvertently killed by the very act of befriending him. She understood what Mireille had tried to tell her now. People in their profession couldn't afford to get close to anyone. Connections were weaknesses that could be exploited. It was much better to avoid such things, so that the uninvolved would not get hurt and they would not suffer the pain of loss.

But even as Kirika went over this cruel lesson, a small part of her still wished that this truism wasn't as absolute as it seemed to be…

* * *

A/N: If you didn't understand the comment in the disclaimer, the title of the Noir theme song is 'Coppélia's Casket'. Thanks to their being no explanation to the reference, I thought Coppélia was some Engrish mispronunciation of 'copper' until I looked it up online and found it was the title character of a 19th century French ballet.

I came up with this idea after watching Noir for the first time, and realizing that while they stated that Kirika's name was an alias, they never said what her real name was. That left plenty of options for who she could be…

According to Megumi Hayashibara (A singer and voice actress whose credits include Rei Ayanami), the ultimate reason why Shinji pilots isn't because he wants to save the world, but because he thinks that saving the world will win him the approval of the father that abandoned him. This time around, Shinji only sought Gendo's approval because he thought it would enable him to be reunited with his sister. However, now he knows that not only is the princess in another castle, nobody in the area knows where the other castle is, or that there was a princess in the first place. The fact that the only thing Shinji wants from his father is something he doesn't have will complicate the scenario.

Shinji is the twin brother of one of the world's deadliest assassins in this story. I don't think that it's implausible to give him sharp reflexes. However, as he hasn't spent the past ten years studying the finer points of how to kill people like his sister has, he can't use those reflexes to their full capacity.

Whether it is by coincidence or choice, Noir has never once taken a contract against an innocent man. The closest they've ever come is taking one on a man whose hands were just as dirty as his victim's were (He had committed the most recent atrocity in a chain of atrocities that two ethnic groups had done to each other for centuries in revenge for the previous ones). Mireille actually thought that this might justify cancelling the contract (That and the fact that the man was likely to die of natural causes within the month anyway). It was Kirika who insisted that they kill him.

My thanks to CJN for the help in ironing out details while I was working out the initial concept.


	2. Despair

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 2

Despair

Commander Gendo Ikari sat behind his desk, thinking over the events of the previous day. The accident that occurred during the activation test with Rei and Unit-00 had left NERV without any pilots fit for duty on the eve of an Angel attack. That incident nearly destroyed his scenario beyond all hope of recovery. Had he not summoned the Third Child to pilot Unit 01, there would have been no way to stop Sachiel's attack. Fortunately, Captain Katsuragi had managed to deliver the boy in time.

Given the fact that the two hadn't spoken to each other in years, the Commander had expected the reunion to be far more confrontational than it had ended up being. Gendo had been prepared to use the critically injured First Child as emotional blackmail to coerce the Third into piloting if necessary. Instead, the Third had stared at the Evangelion for a minute, and then agreed to pilot. It occurred to the Commander that despite their encounter in the EVA bay, he had yet to actually exchange any words with his son.

Gendo discarded that thought as irrelevant. If the Third Child was willing to pilot without prodding on his own behalf, then he wasn't about to waste time interacting with the pilot that could be better spent overseeing the more delicate parts of his scenario. The boy's sole role in the scenario has to ensure that the Angels did not get close enough to Central Dogma to interfere with his scenario and/or initiate one of their own. So long as the Third was willing and able to perform his purpose, all other considerations about him and whatever happened to him after that purpose was played out were unimportant. The only one of the pilots to any purpose beyond guarding the GeoFront until he was ready to begin the final phase of the scenario was Ayanami.

The door chime rang.

"Enter."

In walked SubCommander Kozo Fuyutsuki, Gendo's former college teacher and current second-in-command.

"I have the final report of the engagement between Unit 01 and the Angel, Gendo." He said. Gendo motioned for him to continue.

"Damage to Tokyo-3 consists of severe damage to ten streets and six buildings as a result of the battle, with another two streets and three buildings being damaged or destroyed as the result of the Angel exploding at the end of the battle. None of the damaged buildings housed anything critical to the industry or infrastructure of the city. Because of this, the net impact of the damage done will be to cause traffic difficulties until the roads are repaired. The most critical sections should be done within a week, the rest by the end of the month. There was no damage to the GeoFront proper.

"The damage to EVA-01 was more serious. Approximately 11 percent of the armor will need repair or total replacement. In addition, there was damage to the unit's right hip mechanism that will need to be repaired before it can be taken into the field again. Dr Akagi reports that EVA-01 will be combat ready within five days and fully operational within two weeks.

"Casualties among the military units that engaged the Angel until we took over ranged from seventy percent among the artillery and tank units to one hundred percent from the fighter and helicopter units. Civilian casualties consist of twelve dead and twenty three injured, all of whom had been outside of the shelters during the battle despite being given several hours warning. The only NERV personnel to be injured during the battle was the Third Child.

"Pilot Ikari's injuries from the battle consist mainly of severe bruising. He will be released from the hospital wing by the end of the day. Barring any unseen health problems, he will be cleared as fit to pilot after he undergoes a full physical, which is scheduled to happen in two days. He will begin synchronization training as soon as medical clears him; simulated combat training will begin once EVA-01 is combat ready."

As Kozo completed his report, Gendo smiled. His scenario was proceeding well within expected parameters.

* * *

As far as Misato knew, she had more up close experience with the Angels than anyone else in the world. She based that theory on the fact that she was the only person present during the First Angel's attack on Antarctica to survive. The incident known as Second Impact had left her with a massive scar on her chest, and even more pronounced scars on her psyche.

The nightmarish sight of frozen tundra being transformed into a wasteland that was effectively a suburb of Hell (A state it remained in to this day) still haunted her nearly fifteen years later. The only reason she survived was that her father had sealed her into a protective capsule before the incoming holocaust reached them.

The twin shock of witnessing an apocalypse happen firsthand and seeing the father she hated give up a chance to save himself to protect her caused her to withdraw from the world for years. It wasn't until college that she recovered enough to actually interact with people directly.

Since then, she had devoted her professional life to destroying the creatures that destroyed her life. She had joined the military after leaving college, specializing in tactical operations. Her efforts had resulted in her current position as Chief of Operations for NERV HQ, effectively making her the field commander of all battles against the Angels.

However, battle against the invaders wasn't exactly like combat against any other threat. The Angel's AT field rendered them virtually invulnerable to conventional weapons. As a result, instead of planning out battles of infantry and armor, she worked out battle plans for the use of giant robots. And these robots could only be piloted by a small group of children that fit a list of criteria Misato didn't fully understand. And of that group of children, the only one who was both in the area and in good enough health to pilot was emotionally falling apart right in front of her.

Misato wasn't close enough to the Commander to talk about family matters with him. From her meetings with him, she also gathered that he wasn't the kind of person who brought up family matters in conversations in the first place. As a result of this, she hadn't known that Gendo Ikari had had a daughter. For that matter, she hadn't known that he'd had a son until the day she was informed that Shinji had been selected as the Third Child.

However important or unimportant the Commander considered his children to be, it was clear that the absent Kirika Ikari was a very important part of Shinji's life, and he took the knowledge that his long-absent sibling would not be showing up to welcome the triumphant hero back home like a punch to the gut. Ten minutes had passed since she had expressed her confusion over who Kirika was, and in that time, all Shinji had done was silently weep into his hands. When Misato put a hand around Shinji's shoulders in an effort to comfort him, he buried turned and buried his face in her side, sobbing hysterically. It took Misato an hour and a half to calm him down.

* * *

After she managed to calm the young man down, Misato had Shinji checked out of the hospital. Though Shinji had stopped crying, that was the only noticeable improvement he showed. It was if the boy who had been willing to pilot a machine he knew nothing about against a monster that had annihilated virtually everything that had gone up against it previously with no guarantee that the machine in question would even turn on for him had ceased to exist. While he wasn't in nearly as bad a shape as Misato herself had been after Second Impact – he was still capable of interacting with the people around him – for the most part he had withdrawn from the world as a whole. He looked around blankly, seeing everything but not really registering anything as important unless it was deliberately brought to his attention.

In an attempt to provoke a response in him, Misato drove Shinji to a park that overlooked all of Tokyo-3. When she reached the park, she helped the disturbingly passive boy out of the car. Unlike the trip into Tokyo-3, Shinji hadn't made a single sound on the entire journey. She sat the boy down on a bench, and they waited. The sight that happened before their eyes was enough to penetrate the thick shell of apathy that had been forming around Shinji's heart, if only for a moment.

Hundreds of enormous hatches in the valley beneath them started opening up. From those hatches emerged hundreds of buildings. Shinji gasped as a city skyline grew up from beneath the ground like a forest of skyscrapers. Misato decided to take advantage of his momentary attention to try to get the importance of what he had done across.

"This is Tokyo-3, a city built for the purpose of protecting mankind from the threat the Angels present. There are over a million people living here, Shinji, if you hadn't gone out to fight that Angel, every one of them would likely be dead. This is what NERV exists for, Shinji. We are humanity's last hope against the Angels. And as one of the few people capable of piloting the weapons that we have created against them, which means _you_ are humanity's last hope against the Angels."

Misato watched Shinji's face, hoping that realize that the world was far more important than his aborted family reunion. The fate of mankind rested in the hands of a broken-hearted child, and at the moment, it looked like he was too focused on his own problems to help humanity as a whole out with theirs. Just when Misato thought she might have gotten through to him, he spoke.

"If only Kirika was here to see that."

Misato groaned. They were all doomed.

* * *

Quickly coming to the conclusion that the Third Child was in no condition to care for himself, Misato called Ritsuko and arranged for the boy to be assigned to her care. By the time she arrived at her apartment, Shinji's belongings, which had been mailed to NERV HQ by his previous guardian, had been shipped to the hallway outside. Misato was able to get Shinji to move the boxes into one of the spare rooms without much prompting. He then started going through their contents on his own initiative, something that surprised her. Sighing with relief at the apparent sign that he was pulling out of his depression somewhat, Misato left him to his unpacking and started to prepare dinner. Misato spent the next ten minutes downing two beers and selecting a variety of instant and microwavable foods that could, with imagination, be considered a rough approximation of a healthy meal. Before she could actually make dinner, she heard a strangled cry coming Shinji's room. Hoping that the boy didn't have some undetected health problem kicking in on top of his fragile mental health, she rushed into the room.

The room was a mess, even by Misato's standards. Only two items appeared to be neatly set aside: an SDAT player and a cello. The rest of the room was covered in empty boxes and piles of clothing. Shinji was tearing through the piles, frantically searching for something. Misato wasn't sure what he was looking for, but he appeared desperate to find it. While looking around, she noticed the corner of something sticking out from under a discarded shirt. Picking it up, she saw that it was a framed picture of two toddlers sitting together. One of the two children was obviously a young Shinji. The other was a girl about the same age with brown eyes and poorly combed black hair. Misato assumed that the girl was Shinji's sister.

Shinji noticed that she was holding the picture and snatched it out of her hands. Then he sat down, never taking his eyes off of the picture. His hand caressed the image of his missing sister lovingly, his face depicting an image of pain and loss. He spoke one word.

"Imouto-chan…"

Shinji didn't come when Misato called him to dinner. When she checked up on him before going to sleep, she saw that he had fallen asleep sitting down, his hands still clutching the last surviving shard of a shattered dream.

* * *

The next day, Misato decided to bring up the problem with Shinji up with Ritsuko.

"Rits?" She asked.

"What is it, Misato?" Ritsuko replied.

"What do you know about the Commander's family?"

"Not that much. He doesn't exactly talk about himself that much. His wife died in a lab accident during the early stages of the Evangelion project at GEHIRN ten years ago. I didn't know that he'd had a child until Shinji's name showed up on the Marduk report. Why do you ask?"

"Because Shinji is absolutely certain that he had a sister that stayed with the Commander when he went to live with his uncle. I don't know about you, but I can't recall the Commander being responsible for any girl other than Rei."

"Neither can I. What brought this up?"

"The first thing that Shinji did when he regained consciousness after the battle was to ask to see his sister. The moment I told him that I'd never even heard of a Kirika Ikari he fell apart. If we don't do something about this fast, we could be in a lot of trouble."

"How bad is it?"

"He's trying to withdraw from the world. He spends most of his time sitting on his futon staring at an old photograph of himself and a girl that I assume to be his sister. If you put food in front of him, he'll eat it. If you can get his attention, which generally takes several tries, and then ask him to do a chore, he'll do it, and then go right back to staring at the picture once he's done. The only thing I've seen him do on his own initiative since he dug the photo out of his belongings was go to the bathroom. He isn't nearly as badly off as I was after Second Impact, but on the other hand…"

"You had years to recover from that, and we may not even have months," Finished Ritsuko. "You're right, this is a problem. If we can't snap him out of this at least somewhat, we could very well end up facing the next Angel attack with all our pilots unfit for duty, and avoiding that is the reason we brought Shinji here in the first place."

"Any ideas on what we can do?"

"I'll get Maya to start working on a program that will let the MAGI search through census records to locate people. If we can find this girl, all we need to do is let them call each other a few times and exchange letters. So long as we make sure that he doesn't discuss any classified details about NERV when he does so, there's no harm in letting him have his reunion once we find her. We need a functioning pilot, and the effort it will take to track down one girl is worth it to get one. Until then, we'll need to bring the boy in for training and see what happens."

* * *

Two and a half weeks later, Ritsuko and Misato were not very pleased.

"Shinji's sync ratio has dropped from 40.3 to 23.8. If it drops any further, he won't be able to pilot at all." Ritsuko groused.

"And when he does pilot, he shows potential he can't bring himself to use. His marksmanship scores show that. He only hit one target out of every five, but that was because he only takes one shot out of every five. When you only look at the targets he actually tried to hit, he did a lot better than you'd expect for someone who'd never handled a gun before. He's not good enough to qualify for a marksmanship medal, but he could get that good if he tried." Misato joined in.

"The problem is that he doesn't try."

"True. I have to give an order at least three times before he actually does it. In a real battle the situation could have changed enough to make the order meaningless by that point. He's so unmotivated that he's going to get us all killed."

"So what we need is something that motivates him."

"Do you have an idea, Rits?"

"We were planning to ensure that all the pilots attended the local high school for PR reasons, to show the world that we made sure they got a proper education. If we're lucky, Shinji might be able to bond with some of them. If he's willing to fight for a sibling, he might be willing to fight for a friend."

"All we need to do is hope he makes one then. Still, it might help if Shinji has something on his mind other than his sister. All he does at home is stare at that photograph and occasionally play the cello."

* * *

Shinji slowly trudged to the school. His new guardian had told him that he was to start taking classes at the local junior high. That was fine with him. It might mean that they were tired of having him fool around with the mecha-kaiju that had ruined his dreams. Upon arriving, he was introduced to his class representative, a girl named Hikari Horaki, and shown to his classroom.

When asked to introduce himself to the class, he said "Hello. My name is Shinji Ikari," then sat down at an empty desk without bothering to see if anyone had any questions for him. The teacher looked slightly taken back by Shinji's behavior, but then went into a lecture about Second Impact.

Shinji listened to the teacher's droning, idly wondering why contemporary history was being discussed in what his schedule claimed was a math class. His confusion was interrupted by a PM on his desk computer.

"Are you the pilot?" The message read.

Shinji looked at the message. Yes, he had piloted. But he wished that he hadn't. Before he had come to Tokyo-3, he had been able to hope that he'd see his sister again. But ever since he had piloted Unit 01, that hope had vanished. If one of the department heads of NERV knew that his father was guardian to a girl, but had never heard of Kirika, then she was gone. His dream had shown itself to have only been a dream, one that could not come true. Why would he want to openly associate himself with something that only brought him misery?

Shinji closed the message window without responding.

* * *

After classes were over, Shinji started to head back to Misato's apartment. However, he was stopped by a boy who wasn't wearing the school uniform.

"Hey, new kid. Are you the pilot of that giant robot that was running around a couple of weeks ago?" He demanded.

"Toji, calm down!" said a freckled boy with glasses, who was standing near the other boy.

"Dammit, Kensuke!" replied Toji. "My sister's in the hospital because some jerk went joyriding in a giant machine and dropped a building on her, and when I find him I'm gonna…" Toji growled to himself, then demanded "ARE YOU HIM!" then took a swing at Shinji.

Shinji moved his head to one side, and his arm shot out. The punch missed, and the clumsy return strike took Toji in the gut. Before the fight could escalate, a girl approached the group. She had blue hair, red eyes, and had apparently been seriously injured at some point in the recent past, as parts of her body were heavily bandaged. She addressed Shinji.

"Pilot Ikari. There has been an Angel detected. We need to report to the GeoFront immediately. You others should head to the nearest shelter."

Shinji saw two men in suits and sunglasses he hadn't notices earlier approach in a way that clearly indicated that they were there to escort them to NERV. Shinji allowed himself to be taken away, not noticing the look of rage on Toji's face as he realized that Shinji had been the one he had been looking for.

* * *

Misato and Ritsuko were waiting in the EVA hanger when the pilots arrived. Being both medically unfit for combat duty and without a functioning Evangelion, Rei simply reported in and then left for one of the shelters the GeoFront had for personnel who did not have any responsibilities directly involved with combat. Shinji, simply looked around with the same disinterested, half-aware stare that he had been wearing for the past three weeks. Misato sighed, and then tried to brief him in the vain hope that he might actually register what she was saying and be alert enough to act on it until the battle was over.

"Alright Shinji, the JSSDF has detected an Angel moving in from the coastline. It will reach Tokyo-3 shortly. Your mission is to intercept and destroy it before it can breach the GeoFront. Do you understand, Shinji? … Shinji?"

Shinji had remained his typical apathetic self throughout the briefing. Misato snarled. She was not about to let all of humanity die out because one boy couldn't let go of his own problems long enough to notice the world he lived in. She grabbed Shinji by the collar and started shaking him.

"Are you even listening to me, Shinji? We need you to get in your EVA and stop that Angel, _now!_ If they aren't stopped, we're likely to have a Third Impact, and considering how many people died in the last one, humanity probably won't survive another. _Do you understand me!_ The lives of three billion people are at stake here!" She shouted.

"And one of those three billion will be your sister," Ritsuko added. "There isn't a place in the world that would be safe from the destruction and chaos caused by another Impact. She's in danger from the Angels no matter where she is."

Ritsuko's comment was pure emotional blackmail. It was a low blow that was aimed straight at Shinji's greatest emotional vulnerability. It worked perfectly. Shinji's eyes suddenly narrowed in determination, and he nodded. Then he headed off to the locker room to get his plug suit.

* * *

Shamshel, the Fourth Angel, had reached the outskirts of Tokyo-3 by the time EVA-01 was ready to launch. Shinji's sync ratio had climbed up to 31.7, not as impressive as on his first sortie, but nowhere near the borderline useless ratio that he had had during training. Once deployed, Shinji went to a weapons storage building and picked up a rifle.

Shinji's weapon training with Unit 01 showed him to have the potential to be a marksman. When combined with the advanced telemetry software built into the EVA to refine targeting solutions, this resulted in the rifle's entire clip ending up in a cluster with over two thirds of the shots hitting the Angel's core. Unfortunately, when the smoke from the weapons fire cleared, it became obvious that while the bullets had struck their target, they had not penetrated the AT field, and Shamshel was completely undamaged as a result.

Shamshel then took the offensive, manifesting two whiplike appendages from its stubby arms. These lashed out at EVA-01, slicing completely through the weapons storage building Shinji was near when he dove clear. The advantage in the battle quickly shifted towards the Angel, as Shinji could neither close with his enemy nor reach another rifle while trying to avoid its attacks. The edge that Shamshel wielded appeared to become decisive after one lashing attack sliced into EVA-01's side and severed its power cable. In desperation, Shinji charged at the Angel with his progressive knife, but was quickly impaled on the energy whips. Shinji screamed, then passed out.

A collective groan came up from the Bridge in NERV HQ. Their champion had fallen, and with him the last hope of humanity. They'd never get EVA-00 prepped for battle in time to make a difference, even if Rei was capable of fighting at her full capacity, which she wasn't. Just as they all believed that they were all doomed, a miracle happened.

EVA-01's eyes lit up, and it returned to the fight. It charged the Angel, and wrapped both its hands around Shamshel's throat, squeezing until it broke through the AT field, then tightening around the core at the base of the throat. When the Angel tried to force the Evangelion off with its whips, Unit 01 shifted its grip and started swinging the Angel around like a club, smashing it into buildings and the ground, never ceasing its efforts to crush the core. Finally, the pressure forced on the core caused it to crack and shatter. The Evangelion dropped its lifeless opponent, and then shut down from power loss seconds later.

A cheer rose up from the bridge as the Angel died. Then they began operations to retrieve the pilot and clear up the wreckage caused by the battle. Nobody noticed the fact that Shinji had apparently beaten the Angel while still unconscious. It would be several hours before anyone noticed that two teenagers who had been watching the fight from outside the shelter had been buried in a heap of rubble near the battlefield.

* * *

"It's a good thing you were able to come up with something to get Shinji moving, Rits." Misato said.

"Thanks, but if we can't actually find his sister, it might backfire on us in the long run. What happens if we find out that she's already dead?" Ritsuko replied.

Misato shuddered. The Third Child had a serious fixation on his missing sibling. If she turned out to be dead, they might never pull him out of the resulting depression.

"Thankfully, Maya managed to finish the search program shortly before the alert went up this afternoon," Ritsuko continued. "We should be able to get some answers soon."

The two entered a terminal room and started up the program. Then they waited for the results. The results were not something they expected.

"What does this mean, Rits?" Misato wondered.

"I'm not sure. But I think that we'd have been better off if the program had found a death certificate." She responded.

The two stared at the entry on the screen.

**Target of Search: Ikari, Kirika**

**Searching…**

**No Matches Found**

* * *

**Meanwhile, in Paris…**

Another tragedy had happened to the women known as Noir, and this time it was Mireille who was grieving.

A few days earlier, Mireille's uncle Claude had come to Paris. He had been the one to raise Mireille after the death of her parents. Mireille had been delighted to see her sole remaining relative, and had hoped to introduce him to her partner. That was before he made some troubling revelations to his niece.

Claude Feyder confessed to being an agent of Les Soldats, sent to kill Kirika. He also revealed that the organization that had been hunting them for months had also been behind the murder of Mireille's parents and older brother nine years earlier. He asked her to lead her partner into a trap so that he could complete his mission.

For the rest of that day, Mireille struggled with the dilemma of having to choose between betraying her partner or the man who was her second father. By the time evening came, she had made her decision and took Kirika to see her uncle.

Shortly after arriving, the two left again, leaving Mireille's mother's brother lying dead on the floor of his greenhouse, and two other men dead in the foyer.

Now the older assassin was mourning both the loss of the last of her family, and the loss of some of the small amount of innocence that one could find in someone in their profession. The discovery that her uncle could be involved with an organization that he knew was involved in his sister's murder was troubling.

If Mireille couldn't trust the last remnant of her kin, Kirika wondered, who could they trust?

* * *

A/N: Shinji's really a mess, isn't he? The fact that he can face Misato's driving, housekeeping, and cooking without flinching from any of it shows that he's really out of it. Nobody who was actually paying attention could do that. However, he's found a new reason to keep going – for now. Some people fight to save the world because doing so saves the part of the world they happen to be standing on (Lina Inverse of Slayers is a good example of that type). Shinji's fighting because saving the world will save the part of the world that Kirika is standing on, even if he doesn't know where that place is.

Given how much care Asuka got for the psychological abuse she got from Areal in canon, excessive care for the mental health of the pilots is not a major concern for NERV. Shinji's case is different for one reason – with Rei injured, he's the only pilot they've got. With the campaign against the Angels just starting, NERV cannot afford to be without a functioning pilot. As the only pilot they were going to get for a while, he has value. Asuka, on the other hand, was the least valuable pilot from a combat record perspective, and fell apart towards the end of the campaign. She was no longer needed and was effectively thrown away.

Kirika remained in Gendo's custody after Shinji's departure for a matter of days before she was shipped off to her part in Noir. Ritsuko would have been in college at the time, so they wouldn't have had a chance to encounter each other. Fuyutsuki might remember Kirika, though.

Why didn't Shinji put some effort into making himself 'useful' to his father to have an earlier reunion? Because he didn't have a clue what Gendo would consider useful. And even if he knew what use Gendo had for his daughter, Shinji could not possibly have qualified for that use without first making a stop at Jusenkyo. Part of the description of Noir (in the lines that remain the same in all three versions) states that Noir is 'Two _maidens_ who govern death'. Boys need not apply.

I'm not sure of how big a role Mireille will be playing in the story, but she will not be written out. Noir is a title for two, not one.

SEELE and Soldats are totally different organizations. Le Grand Retour (Soldats' mysterious scheme) has nothing to do with the Human Instrumentality Project whatsoever. And the Human Instrumentality Project has nothing to do with Le Grand Retour – at least not as Altena has envisioned it. I'd like to thank Devavrata for indirectly inspiring an idea connecting the two that won't be coming into play for quite some time. What is it? Sore wa himitsu desu.

Noir isn't really about girls killing people for money any more than Evangelion is about kids piloting giant robots. Those are the mechanism in which the story plays out, not the point of the story itself. As I see it, Noir is about hard choices, and the consequences of making them. Mireille's choice between Kirika and Claude is the first choice shown, but it was hardly the first one made. All three Noir (Mireille, Kirika, and Chloe, who hasn't shown up in this fic yet) were shaped by a choice offered to their parent(s) that defined what kind of people they became, and set the stage for later choices. These choices aren't the kind where there is a clear-cut correct answer, but the important thing is that you make the choice yourself, and live with what happens as a result, rather than let someone else choose for you. Given how passive Shinji is, it will be interesting to see how he copes.

The ages of the cast of Noir aren't given, but for story purposes I'm assigning them the following: Kirika is 14. Mireille is 19. Chloe is also 14, but several months younger than Kirika.


	3. Anger

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion.

The Black Hands Of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 3

Anger

Shinji slowly awoke, his body aching all over. Opening his eyes, he noticed that the ceiling looked familiar for some reason. After blinking his eyes a few times, he recognized it as the ceiling of the hospital room where he had woken up in the last time he had battled an Angel.

Shinji wondered how he had gotten there. The last thing he remembered, he had been hit by the squid-like Angel. He had felt agonizing pain emanating from the points in his body corresponding to the places where the EVA had been damaged. As he lost consciousness from the pain, he somehow got the impression that someone was trying to comfort him. For one tiny fraction of a second, Shinji felt like he wasn't alone for the first time in years. Then the darkness had consumed him.

He was supposed to be the only person that NERV had who could fight the Angels. If he had lost, what had happened? Why was he still alive? Had events that would trigger a Third Impact been set into motion? Would the devastation of an Impact reach Kirika, wherever she was? Shinji's worrying was interrupted by the arrival of Misato.

"The… Angel… What?" Shinji started to ask, still groggy.

"Don't worry, Shinji. You got it, though it was a near thing." Misato replied.

"Huh?" Shinji couldn't remember injuring the Angel at all; let alone inflicting something that could kill it.

"You managed to crush its core just before you ran out of power. I don't know why you charged the thing and try to strangle it after you took that nasty hit, but it worked, even if you did end up wrecking everything in the area in the process."

Thinking back, Shinji couldn't recall doing that. His mind must have blanked that out from the pain. But the important thing was that the threat to his sister was gone. He sighed with relief at that. A while later, an orderly came in, checked him over, issued him some painkillers, and told Misato that he was free to go. Five minutes later, Shinji was blanching in horror as he realized that the driving habits that Misato showed the day they met were how she always drove, not just in emergencies.

* * *

The battered Renault screeched to a halt at the site of the battle between EVA-01 and the Fourth Angel. Between the workers clearing away all the rubble from damaged buildings and the techs examining the Angel's corpse, the area was bustling with activity. Shinji and Misato made their way to the pavilion that Ritsuko had set up as a temporary office. Misato and Ritsuko ended up in a discussion about what the Angel was made of. Shinji tried to follow the conversation, but only was able to figure out a few points.

First: The state of the art scanning and processing equipment didn't know what it was. Second: What little the equipment could decipher was unusual, but nobody really knew what it meant. Third: Misato could barely comprehend the explanations that Ritsuko was giving. Which was one up on Shinji.

Commander Ikari showed up in the office and ordered Ritsuko to concentrate her efforts on retrieving the pulverized core of the Angel and to dispose of the rest of the remains once that was done. The Commander then turned to leave, pulling on his gloves as he did. Shinji noticed that the man had severe half-healed burns over both hands and wondered how he got them. Shinji didn't realize that he'd wondered out loud until one of the techs answered him.

"He burned his hands getting Rei out of her entry plug during the accident in the activation trial just before you arrived." She said.

"Who's Rei?" Shinji asked.

"Rei? She's the girl you came into NERV with the other day, the pilot of EVA-00. The Commander has always looked after her. She's like a daughter to him."

Shinji had been holding a bottle of water in one hand. The moment those words left the tech's mouth, the bottle was crumpled into a mass of crushed plastic. Shinji tossed the bottle to the ground and stormed out, a look of absolute hatred etched onto his face.

* * *

Shinji stomped through the ruined area, seething inwardly. How could he. _How could he!_ First he threw away his son. Then he did the same with his daughter. Then he went and replaced his children with a total outsider. How could he practically adopt a child after tearing his own family apart and refusing to allow them even the slightest chance of coming back together again? How could he care enough about someone else's child to risk his health to save her when he couldn't be bothered to send his own son a single birthday card in ten years?

Shinji tromped through the piles of rubble, not really seeing any of them. Some of the workers called out to him, trying to get him to stay clear of the loose rubble, but he didn't pay them any heed. He soon learned why they wanted him to stay clear when some of it shifted under his feet. Shinji slipped and fell to his knees, fortunately avoiding any injury worse than scraped skin and a ruined pair of pants. Looking around as he climbed to his feet, he noticed a human arm sticking out of the heap a little further uphill.

Shinji called over some of the workers, who started excavating the mound. Buried under the mound were two children that Shinji recognized from the confrontation at the school shortly before the battle. Kensuke was fairly lucky. His glasses were broken, as was one arm and several ribs, but that was all the immediately obvious damage. Toji, on the other hand, had ended up with one leg pinned under a large piece of rubble. The leg ended up crushed. As they were loaded into ambulances that had arrived, one of the medics said that it would be months before he would be able to walk again, assuming he could without having the limb removed and replaced with a prosthetic.

* * *

Things started settling down to a routine. Shinji resumed synchronization and combat training, and since he had started to see this as relevant, his performance in both started to increase. By the end of the first week of serious training, he ended up qualifying as Expert with the rifle, with his marksmanship scores still increasing. His close-range skills also improved, but not to the same degree. In his day-to-day life, he remained living with Misato, though after the first time he actually tasted Misato's cooking he insisted on taking over all food preparation.

Toji ended up with an extended stay in the hospital, down the hall from his sister's room. Kensuke was released after having treatment and one day of observation. The day after he was released, he leaked the fact that Shinji was the pilot of EVA-01 to his entire class, a fact that spread to the rest of the school by the end of the day. As a result, Shinji found himself continually pestered by hero-worshippers who were constantly asking questions that he either didn't know the answers to or wasn't permitted to according to security regulations. Shinji tried to avoid them whenever he could. There was only one thing about piloting that he cared about, and it wasn't fame.

Kensuke was the most ardent of the hero worshippers. He went on constantly about how absolutely cool the battle was, seemingly forgetting the injuries he received during the battle. In fact, he appeared to be more upset over the fact that NERV had confiscated his recording of the battle than he was of the fact that he nearly got killed. Shinji found the otaku a nice person to be around when his mind was on anything other than Evangelions. Some of the conspiracy theories/urban legends that Kensuke researched for amusement were entertaining (The most interesting being the ones about Noir, who apparently was a vigilante who traveled the world executing criminals the law couldn't touch, such as a warlord in Africa and a Triad boss in Taiwan).

Things continued in this manner for about a month, until Rei was cleared by NERV Medical to resume piloting duties.

* * *

Misato, Ritsuko and Fuyutsuki were in a conference room discussing the preparations for the reactivation test of Unit-00 the following day. The Commander would have also been present, but he had been called into a teleconference with some VIPs from the UN. They had spent over an hour listing the various equipment and personnel needs in order to be able to activate the Evangelion, resume training operations in the event of a success, and minimize the damage and injuries in the event of another failure. After they had resolved all of the issues for the job on the coming day, the SubCommander brought up one final question.

"Is there some issue between the First and Third Children that I should be aware of? The look that appears on the Third's face whenever the First is discussed in his presence is rather concerning." Kouzou asked.

Misato nodded. She had tried to get Shinji to deliver an updated security card to Rei's apartment earlier that day, and the look of rage that appeared on his face the moment Rei's name came up was frightening. She had backed off and had someone from Section 2 deliver the card.

"I think that might stem from something that Maya said to Shinji during the examination of the remains of the Fourth Angel. She said that the First was like a daughter to the Commander." Ritusko replied. Ritsuko inwardly smirked at that description. She knew exactly why Gendo valued the First, and it didn't have anything to emotional attachment, familial or otherwise.

Misato thought over that statement, then paled. "She said that? No wonder Shinji gets so angry whenever Rei is mentioned!"

Fuyutsuki looked thoughtful. "So he thinks that his father has replaced him with the First?" He inquired.

"No, I don't think he believes that the Commander used Rei as a replacement for _him_."

Ritsuko realized what Misato meant, and also paled. "Oh, great." She moaned.

"Is there something I should know about?" Fuyutsuki asked.

The two women brought the SubCommander up to speed on Shinji's extreme fixation on his missing sibling. After they finished, Kouzou paused to think on what he had been told.

"Kirika… I haven't thought of her in years."

"You know her? When we tried to have the MAGI track her down, we couldn't even find proof that she'd ever been born." Misato asked.

"Really? That's strange. I met her a few times back before her mother died in that accident at GEHIRN. Shortly after Yui's death, I had to leave Japan for some business in the other branches for a week or so and she and her brother were gone by the time I came back. Gendo said that he'd arranged for them to go into foster care so that he could focus on his duties. I'd always thought that they'd gone to the same place. The two of them had been inseparable up to that point, so there's no reason why they should have been sent to different caretakers."

Ritsuko and Misato looked at each other, and immediately grasped what the other was thinking. Ritsuko was the one who verbalized it.

"Sir, I don't think you should let Shinji know this."

"Oh?"

"The only reason he piloted against the Third Angel was because he thought his sister would be waiting for him when the battle was over. When he found out that she wasn't, he suffered a mental breakdown that we barely pulled him out of in time for the battle with the Fourth. The only reason he fought then was because we told him that if the Angels won, Kirika would die no matter where in the world she was. So far, it looks like the only people in the world that Shinji cares about are his sister and one boy from his school, and his classmate is a very distant second. If he finds out that Kirika was sent away a week after he was, and was never allowed to contact her anyway, I can't say what that will do to him. It may cause him to be unwilling or unable to pilot anymore."

"What would you suggest then, Doctor?"

"The best case would be for us to find Kirika and use her as a stabilizing influence on the Third. In the event that this fails, we should either have the Second sent to Tokyo-3 as soon as possible, or locate the Fourth as a replacement in the event that Shinji suffers another breakdown and cannot pilot."

"I see. I'll take that into consideration, Doctor." With that, Fuyutsuki stood and left the room.

* * *

To the relief of everyone in NERV (With the possible exception of Shinji), the reactivation of EVA-00 was a complete success. The various personnel that were on call in the event of another catastrophic failure were stood down, and the engineering staff was called on to begin equipping the Evangelion with the standard armoring and equipment needed for combat operations. As that process started, Misato and Ritsuko heaved a sigh of relief. With both Evangelions operational, the fate of the world was no longer lying exclusively in the hands of a boy who might end up falling apart on them without notice. The relief was short lived. The equipping process had barely been going on for an hour when an alarm sounded. The Fifth Angel had arrived, and with EVA-00 not fully armored, it was up to Shinji to deal with it.

The 'battle', if it could be called that, was extremely short. The moment EVA-01 reached the surface, the enormous floating diamond that was Ramiel started spinning rapidly, quickly producing a powerful beam that cut halfway through the Evangelion's armor before it could get off of the launch ramp. EVA-01 was quickly returned to the GeoFront. While the medics took away the unconscious pilot and techs began replacing the damaged armor, Misato headed off with the bridge technicians to figure out how best to deal with this threat. Meanwhile, Ramiel had produced a giant drill and started digging into the GeoFront.

"The last decoy we sent up wasn't fired upon. It looks like we've found the range on this thing." Reported Shigeru.

"Maybe, but there's nothing we've got that can do damage at that range, and there's no way that we could close to effective range before getting taken out by that particle beam. Misato countered.

"Perhaps both Evangelions could deploy at once? If one drew the Angel's fire, the other could close and destroy it."

"Which would guarantee that we'd lose at least one pilot. I'd rather not have lose anyone if we can avoid it. Evangelions are hard to replace, and pilots are hard to come by. But we might not have a choice. Deploy two targets within the Angel's firing range and let's see what happens."

Two missile batteries were raised from the GeoFront. The Angel quickly destroyed one of them, then destroyed the second about fifteen seconds later. Misato looked at the time frame implied by the exercise, then frowned.

"That idea's out. We might get an EVA in close enough to fire on the Angel, but the pilot would get one shot at max before being destroyed. We'd most likely lose both pilots and not harm the Angel."

"Captain?" Asked Makoto, "NERV may not have any weapons with that kind of range, but the JSSDF might have something." He pulled up the result of a data search and displayed an experimental positron cannon.

"Let me see…" Misato pondered, looking over the schematics. She quickly set up the MAGI to extrapolate how likely a direct hit with the cannon at the given range would be given the Evangelion's targeting systems and Shinji's current marksmanship records. The result came back: 20. Misato then asked it to recalculate on the assumption that he'd survive to make a second shot in the event that he missed the first. The result came back at 47. Deciding that a near fifty-fifty chance was the best they were likely to get, Misato decided to put this into motion. Ordering the techs to find something that could be used as a shield to protect an Evangelion from one shot from the Angel's particle beam, Misato left to speak with the Commander. She needed to requisition a large weapon from the JSSDF, and if the red tape took more than three hours to cut through, they wouldn't get it back to NERV in time for it to make a difference.

* * *

When Shinji awoke in the hospital, he was quickly taken to a briefing room. Misato was waiting for him there.

"Alright, Shinji, we don't have much time here. We have maybe an hour before the Angel breaches the GeoFront. Here's the plan: We have obtained an experimental positron cannon from the JSSDF. We believe that it has sufficient range and power to take out the Angel. We will be deploying you on the outside of the Angel's detection range and have you take it down from a distance. In the event that you miss the first shot, Rei will be deployed with a shield we've jury-rigged from the hull of a scrapped space shuttle. This should be enough to stop one shot from the Angel, but it probably will not be good for a second. Given the amount of time it will take to recharge the positron cannon, you will _not_ have enough time for a third shot. Do you have any questions?" When Shinji didn't reply, Misato went on. "Get suited up. We launch in 45 minutes."

* * *

It was near midnight, and the two Evangelions were launched on the extreme edge of Tokyo-3. EVA-01 climbed a large hill and started aiming in an enormous cannon, which was connected to a thick power cord over two kilometers long. EVA-00 got into position on the near side of the hill and aligned a massive shield. Shinji then waited for the go-ahead.

"Cannon is charging. Charge will be complete in 5…4…3…2…1…Fire when ready" Came the call from the bridge.

Just as Shinji was about to fire, the Angel fired its particle beam at EVA-01. Somehow it had detected the charging of the weapon and fired in response. Rei quickly intercepted the beam with her shield. Shinji watched as the beam slowly ate through the shield. As the shield started to fail, Shinji had an idea. He started running in an arc to the side. Then he quickly aimed his cannon and fired.

Shinji's shot lanced past EVA-00 and the beam being launched by the Angel. It hit Ramiel in the side and cut straight through, boring a hole through the exact center of its form, obliterating the core. The Angel crashed to the ground, lifeless. At the same time, the particle beam pierced through the shield, drilling into EVA-00. The test model Evangelion held up under the blast by sheer determination, then collapsed once the beam cut off.

Shinji opened a com channel to the bridge. "Target eliminated" he reported, then headed back to the GeoFront. He didn't spare a single glance for the damaged Evangelion sprawled on the other side of the hill.

* * *

The battle was over. The GeoFront had not been breached, but it had been a near thing. Technicians were working to repair the damage done to the two Evangelions, while medics worked to treat Rei for the injuries she suffered while protecting Shinji. Misato and Ritsuko were meeting in Ritsuko's office, discussing a side issue from the battle.

"Well, Shinji's willing to fight, but this new problem is almost as bad. He didn't even make a cursory check to see if Rei was alright after the battle. We're going to be in trouble if he can't work with her if we end up with another Angel like this. I hope he can work with Asuka when she shows up." Misato grumbled.

Ritsuko knew that Rei's survival didn't really matter. She could always be replaced with one of the spares. However, she also knew that Misato didn't know this. "I think we'd better ask the SubCommander to see if he can get the Marduk Institute to find a candidate for the Fourth Child as quickly as possible."

Misato nodded. Shinji might be the greatest defense the world had against the Angels, but unless he managed to work through his personal problems, then depending on him alone could spell disaster.

* * *

It had begun with Mireille going back to her family estate in Corsica to visit her parents' grave. While there, she learned that not only had her uncle Claude been part of Les Soldats, but her parents had been members as well, using the influence of the shadowy organization to solidify their hold on the Corsican criminal underworld in exchange for using that power to advance whatever agenda Les Soldats had.

The deaths of Laurent and Odette Bouquet were not murders from a certain point of view. They were executions, a punishment inflicted on agents of Les Soldats for violating a single order. The death of their son was either a secondary killing to make the deaths look like it had been ordered by a rival crime family or just a precaution to remove a witness. At the time Mireille wondered why the Soldats had allowed her uncle to take her away rather than making a clean sweep of the household. That mystery had just been solved, by the investigation that had just ended in another battle.

Mireille had sent out some requests to some contacts about some photocopied documents they had acquired that discussed Les Soldats. The pages were identified as being part of something known as the Langumal Manuscript, a centuries old document that had very few known copies. Further research into the manuscript revealed that all but one known copy had been stolen, and the last copy was in the hands of a private collector in Austria.

Mireille and Kirika visited the collector, only to find that his copy had been lost in a mysterious fire over a year previous. As they left the residence that had turned out to hold yet another dead end, they found themselves under attack by a group of Soldat soldiers. Strengthened by the timely arrival of Chloe, the mysterious magenta-haired girl who referred to herself as the True Noir, they were able to kill them to a man.

Three assassins now stood together on what had been a private residence in Austria and was now just another battlefield in the conflict between the group known as Noir and the organization known as Les Soldats. Kirika tried to get Chloe to explain some of the mystery of her past, which the third girl seemed to know more of than she did herself. Chloe responded by folding her hand so that her index and forefingers were extended and placing her hand over her heart. Then she began calmly reciting:

"Noir… It the name of an ancient fate…"

Acting purely on a reflex she didn't even know she had, Kirika placed her hand over her heart in an identical gesture and joined in, completing a passage she had never knowingly heard from a source she didn't know in perfect unison with the other girl:

"Two maidens that govern death… The peace of the newly-born, their black hands protect."

The joint recitation of the two assassins, combined with information that Mireille had discovered recently, made Kirika realize something about her past, and her partner's past, that was unsettling.

The title of Noir was originally given by the elite enforcers of Les Soldats. The three girls all had one thing in common: they were all the children of Soldat agents who had been chosen to be trained for that role at an early age. Mireille's parents had refused to give her up, and were executed for disobeying orders. Chloe and Kirika's parents had obeyed.

There was no longer any real point in Kirika trying to recover her past: she didn't have one. All there would be is years of learning how to kill on behalf of the organization that was now trying to kill her. Even if she did find her family, there would be no welcome home for her. Her parents had sold her for a little more influence in a world-spanning conspiracy. They wouldn't be happy to see their bargaining chip come back.

As she and Chloe repeated the passage describing Noir over and over, Kirika wondered if she would have been happier if she had stayed an ignorant amnesiac schoolgirl back in Japan.

* * *

A/N: Last chapter, I mentioned that a major theme of Noir is hard choices and dealing with the consequences of those choices. Possibly the greatest choice made was made before series started, by the parents of the three assassins, to choose between their child and the Soldats. The families of Kirika and Chloe chose Les Soldats (Which is pretty much the only thing said about them in canon), while Mireille's chose her, a choice they believed was the right one even at the very moment that they were killed for making it. A key reason I chose Evangelion as the second series in this crossover was due to the fact that if forced to choose between his child and something that would advance his scenario, Gendo would choose the scenario without a moment's hesitation. He certainly did when dealing with Shinji.

Odette Bouquet's role in Noir is similar to Yui Ikari's role in Evangelion. Both are mother to a major character, have been dead for years before the main story starts, and the circumstances in which they died shaped what kind of people every member of the cast who knew them became. The last point is why they're arguably the most significant minor characters of their respective anime.

It might not be logical for Shinji to resent Rei for being favored by his father while Kirika was 'discarded' (It wasn't her fault), but 1: This is an issue that is a major emotional hotspot for him, and 2: Absolute fairness is not something that fourteen-year-olds think much about.

Given Noir's choice of targets, one could interpret the actions of Noir to be altruistic (So long as you don't know that they were being paid to kill the bad guys).


	4. Les Secrets des Soldats

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 4

Les Secrets Des Soldats

Gendo Ikari listened to the report that Fuyutsuki had brought him. The implications of what his former teacher had found out from Captain Katsuragi and Dr Akagi was troubling. It wasn't the fact that they believed that the Third Child suffering from severe emotional dependency; Gendo had been hoping for that. But the scenario called for Shinji to be dependent on him, so as to be easily controllable, not on his daughter, who wasn't available.

"Are the Captain and the Doctor certain of their analysis?" He asked.

"Absolutely. The first thing that the Third Child did was to request to see his sister immediately after he regained consciousness. Upon learning that she was not in the area, he apparently suffered a mental breakdown of some kind. Dr Akagi was only capable of pulling him out of it by explaining that a Third Impact would threaten his sister's safety no matter where she was.

"This dependency also seems to impact his ability to work with the First Child. He sees her as someone you found as a replacement for his sister, and resents her for it. While there have been no incidents of the Third attempting to bring harm to the First, or even evidence that he has considered such, he makes a deliberate point of interacting with her as little as possible. On the one occasion where they were required to work as a unit, the Third showed absolutely no concern for the wellbeing of the First when Unit-00 was damaged, not even exerting the effort needed to request a status report.

"The Third's condition is of concern for two reasons. First, it is possible that he might suffer another mental breakdown before we can find a replacement, leaving Unit-01 without a pilot while there are still twelve Angels left to deal with. Secondly, the Third's inability to work with the First introduces an unwelcome factor that makes any future operations that require greater unit coordination than was needed for the battle with the Fifth Angel unfeasible. This second issue may be mitigated by the fact that there is no known issue that might prevent the Second Child from operating jointly with either the First or Third Children."

"Do Captain Katsuragi and Dr Akagi have a proposed solution for this problem?"

"They have agreed that there are two possible remedies for this situation. The first is that we locate your daughter and allow her limited contact with the Third Child. They believe that this would resolve the Third's mental instabilities at minimal cost to NERV so long as we make certain that no classified information is discussed. I concur with this evaluation. However, Dr Akagi has already attempted to trace her through various stored records, and has failed to locate her."

Gendo thought back to the last time he saw his daughter. Yes, bringing her in to contact the Third Child would be the easiest way to correct this deviation in the scenario. If he arranged things carefully, he might even be able to make the boy think that contact with Kirika would only be allowed with his permission, making the Third desperate for his approval and restoring the scenario to a very close approximation of its planned state. Unfortunately, access to Kirika was something he could not control, and was not likely to gain control of.

Gendo had still been in college when he was first approached by the organization known as Les Soldats. They had noticed an intelligent and ambitious scientist in training and decided that he would be of use to them. At first, the arrangement was simple. They saw to it that his grant requests were approved without question, and in return he would perform research in certain areas and provide the results of these 'special projects' to them and them alone. This arrangement changed in the year 2000. Gendo was instructed to find a way to attach himself to an expedition to the Antarctic led by a Dr Katsuragi. Once there, he was to obey all instructions from the head of the expedition and its backers and to report everything that was discovered back to Les Soldats.

That expedition led to Second Impact. After the Impact, Gendo had been instructed to continue working for the backers of the expedition, and to report on what they had him do. This work caused him to get in contact with SEELE, and from there his research work in GEHIRN. Gendo's current status as head of NERV stemmed from the fact that factions of the UN controlled by SEELE and Les Soldats both backed his appointment, due to the fact that both organizations believed that he was their agent.

But of all the orders that he had received from Les Soldats, there was one whose purpose he never understood. Shortly after the birth of his children, he was visited by a high ranking member of Les Soldats, a woman named Altena. She showed up one day, claiming to be an old friend of his from high school. She spent the afternoon with him and Yui, cheerfully reminiscing about events from his younger years as if she had been there (describing actual events with such accuracy that Gendo almost believed that she had actually been there) fussed over the newborn children, and left after a few hours. At no point in the meeting did she ever attempt to discuss Soldats business with him. The purpose of that visit would not become clear for years.

About a month after Yui's death in the contact experiment with EVA-01, Altena contacted him again. This time, she had an order for him. She wanted Kirika. Accustomed to the expectation that Soldat agents obey instructions from their superiors without question, he never thought to ask why the most influential woman in the world (Even if 99 percent of the world didn't know that she existed) wanted a four year old girl. At the time, he was still working out his scenario, and he needed some way to ensure that Shinji would be emotionally dependent on his remaining parent; removing one more emotional support would help ensure that, and he had yet to find a role for his daughter in the scenario. So he dumped Shinji off on the boy's great-uncle. Two days later, he delivered Kirika, who hadn't stop crying about wanting to be with her aniki since they had parted, to Altena. He hadn't seen the girl since.

Now, ten years later, a need for her had suddenly appeared. However, Gendo couldn't exactly ask for her back. He had no clue where she was or what she was doing. For all he knew, she was dead. All that mattered is that Les Soldats had claimed her, and that Les Soldats did not give up that which they saw as theirs lightly. The fact that they had apparently arranged for any records concerning her existence to vanish only reinforced that.

"I'm afraid that solution is not viable, Fuyutsuki. Her role in the scenario has already played out. What was the other suggestion?"

Kouzou's eyes narrowed at Gendo's calm response, and then he blinked and resumed his report. "The second suggestion was that we expedite the identification and recruitment of the Fourth Child so that we have a spare pilot in the event that the Third becomes unable to continue piloting."

Gendo nodded. "That option appears to be feasible. I will bring it up with the Committee at the next meeting. Now, concerning the upcoming demonstration of the Jet Alone weapons platform…"

Ritsuko was not pleased about the decidedly unhelpful statement concerning Kirika that Fuyutsuki had brought back from the Commander. Given the fact that Misato was not cleared to know that there was a scenario to begin with, the two of them decided to work on an alternative explanation for when she got around to asking if any developments on the issue. They ultimately decided to claim that the Commander had granted custody of his daughter to an acquaintance of his who had died eight years previous. That way they could blame the confusion about her whereabouts on somebody who couldn't be questioned.

A few weeks later, a defense contractor made a public demonstration of an automated nuclear robot called Jet Alone. Halfway through the trials, the robot went out of control and started running towards the nearest city while slowly approaching a reactor meltdown. Knowing that Shinji probably wouldn't fight to protect a single city without proof that his sister was in it, Misato called Rei in to face Jet Alone. The robot was stopped in its tracks after EVA-00 smashed both of its knee actuators to scrap. Once the robot was unable to continue moving, a team of nuclear specialists entered the reactor and powered down the reactor. The project was scrapped, and the budget for the project was transferred to NERV. Various theories were offered concerning why Jet Alone malfunctioned like that, but nobody knew the truth – that Gendo had arranged for Ritsuko to hack the control system and enter a virus that started the robot's mad run.

Shortly after the Jet Alone incident, the Marduk Institute produced the name of a candidate for the Fourth Child. Misato and Ritsuko examined the records considering the boy in question. Then they sent a message back to the Institute, pointing out that the boy's doctors were uncertain about how long it would take him to learn how to walk again, which made him medically unfit for duty. They also questioned the wisdom of entrusting the fate of the world to one of the only two fourteen year olds to ever be awarded an Honorable Mention from the Darwin Awards. The Instrumentality Committee was upset over the fact that someone dared doubt the judgement of one of its subordinate organizations, but Ritsuko managed to successfully defend her logic when they questioned her on the issue. The name of Toji Suzuhara was withdrawn from consideration as a pilot, and the Institute began looking for a more suitable Fourth Child.

A week after the pilot selection from the Marduk Institute was rejected, word reached NERV that the UN Pacific Fleet was nearing Tokyo-3, bringing with it the Second Child and EVA-02.

The helicopter approached the fleet. The sight of virtually the entire UN Pacific Fleet managed to pry Kensuke away from his hormone-induced fantasies of Misato and switch him into otaku mode. Once the chopper landed, he immediately started running around, trying to get every possible detail on his camera. As Misato and Shinji left the helicopter at a considerably slower pace, they saw him running sideways, not noticing that he was heading straight for a red-haired girl in a yellow dress.

A moment before the two collided, the girl swiftly took one step back and stuck out her foot. Kensuke tripped and fell onto the steel runway, his camera skittering across the deck. The boy climbed painfully to his feet, retrieved his camera, and then retreated to the company of the people he had arrived with before the girl could give him more than just the scrapes and bruises he got from the fall.

Misato apparently recognized the girl who had taken down Kensuke so easily. "This is Asuka Langley Soryu, pilot of EVA-02. Hello, Asuka. You've grown since the last time I saw you."

"Not just grown, my figure's filled out as well." Asuka replied, walking towards Misato. She then turned towards the two boys, confidence bordering on arrogance flashing in her eyes as she looked over them. She was still silently judging them when the wind picked up. The breeze caused her dress to flip up, exposing her undergarments to the two boys. Acting purely on instinct, Asuka's arm shot out, seeking to punish the two perverts that had peeped on her. Her hand caught Kensuke on the side of his head, causing the boy to fall onto the deck a second time. But to her great surprise, when her hand reached the second boy, Shinji's hand came up and caught her hand at the wrist.

Taking this as a challenge, Asuka struck out with her other hand. Shinji blocked that attack as well, and then released her wrist to attempt a counter-strike. This caused the situation to degenerate into a full-out fight. After Shinji barely managed to avoid a vicious hook, Misato stopped purely watching and tried to pull them apart, but couldn't get close enough without risking getting clocked herself.

The two fighters appeared to have equal reaction times, but that was the only equal point between them. Between self-defense training and learning close combat in an EVA, Asuka had been in training for ten years. Shinji had had less than three months. He did quite well given the disparity in experience, but after maybe a minute Asuka drove her fist into Shinji's gut, causing the boy to fall onto his knees, gasping for breath.

Satisfied that she had defended her honor successfully, Asuka looked down on her defeated foes. "So, which one of these is the Third Child?" She asked Misato, glaring at the boy she'd knocked to the ground twice with contempt as he climbed to his feet, brushing off his ruined outfit.

"This is Shinji, designated pilot of Unit 01." Misato replied, indicating the boy who had taken the punch to the gut.

Asuka looked over her soon-to-be coworker. On one hand, the boy had defied her when she tried to punish him. On the other hand, he was good enough to try defying her. He obviously wasn't as good as she was, but he might be good enough to support her when she arrived at Tokyo-3. She'd have to see.

"So, what do you think of the Third Child?" Kaji asked.

Asuka thought back over the hour or so since she had met the other pilot. From the introduction to the Fleet's flag staff (Whose resentment of NERV's prominence – and very existence – hadn't lowered a bit in the all the time they'd been escorting EVA-02), to Kaji's arrival, and all through lunch, the boy had barely spoken a word. He didn't try to avoid being involved in a conversation, but he never bothered to insert himself into one either. When standing next to his overly exuberant friend, he just seemed to be so unimportant that one almost didn't notice him.

The only real thing of importance that Asuka had noticed about him was that he kept looking towards her every so often. But the look on his face when he did so wasn't one of admiration or fear (Which she would have accepted as her just dues or his just desserts), but one of wariness, as if he was just checking that she wasn't planning on taking another swing at him at the moment.

"He's… strange," She finally answered. "Is he any good as a pilot? I haven't heard much about him."

"Well, his sync rate on his first attempt was over forty percent," Kaji started, which caused Asuka to gasp, "But after that his sync rate plummeted for three weeks. It didn't start picking up again until the Fourth Angel attacked." Asuka smirked. The boy might have had a better starting sync rate than her, but he obviously couldn't sustain it.

"His marksmanship scores are the currently the best of all the pilots," Kaji continued. Asuka frowned at that, not liking the concept that someone was officially better than her in something. "But he hasn't had much training in close combat yet." The smirk returned, as Asuka reveled in the fact that she was still the better pilot when things got down to the wire. Basic marksmanship was something anybody could pick up quickly, but close combat was something that took years of effort to learn.

Reaffirming the fact that she was still superior to the other pilot, Asuka went to make sure that the Third Child was just as aware of that fact as she was.

Shinji looked over the enormous machine that Asuka had taken him to see. Evangelion Unit 02 was apparently the first production model Evangelion, a step above the prototype model that Unit 01 was. He listened halfheartedly as she extolled its virtues as a model superior to the one he had been issued.

He was far more interested in the girl standing before him. On one hand, Asuka had pretty much introduced herself by trying to hit him – successfully. On the other hand, that punch had shown that she was a better fighter than he was. Of the three battles he had been in, two had been decided in close range, and both had been won by luck. Having someone who could fight with the Angels close in could make it easier to defeat them, which would help keep Kirika safe. But if she decided to make hitting him a habit…

Asuka's monologue and Shinji's ponderings were interrupted by a large explosion. Picking up a pair of binoculars that a sailor dropped when the shockwave hit, he looked out in the direction of the blast. In the distance was something that looked like a giant fish, which had just taken down one of the ships at the tail end of the formation and was heading towards them.

Shinji's first instinct was to get into EVA-02 and face the monster, but a thought made him pause. Asuka had said that her Evangelion was a totally different model than the one he used. That meant it could have a different control interface, or features he didn't know how to use. They also didn't bring a rifle with the power cable Misato had brought to the Over the Rainbow, so he'd be using mostly unfamiliar weapons. He wouldn't be able to use this EVA to its full capacity. As the Angel emerged from the water to attack a second ship, he saw something that enabled him to make up his mind. He might not be able to fight this Angel and win, but he could help the one person who could. He would just have to trust that Asuka would be able to fulfill his mission for him.

As Asuka turned towards Shinji, about to give him a command, he said "The Angel's core is in the back of its throat."

"What are you talking about, dummkoph? Get over here and" Asuka started.

"The Angel's core. It looks like a large red sphere. If you destroy that, the Angel goes down. It's in the back of the Angel's throat. Good Luck."

Asuka climbed into the entry plug of EVA-02 and started the power up sequence. The Third Child had opted to not join her in the battle; instead choosing to point out what he claimed was a weak spot and getting out of the way. No matter. That would simply mean that all the glory for the victory would go to her. The simplicity of the weakness that Shinji had pointed out irked her, though. Why hadn't anyone told her that the Angels came with built-in bull's-eyes?

Evangelion Unit 02 climbed to its feet, the large tarp it had been covered in draped about it like an enormous tan cloak. It then stood there, standing dramatically as a hail of missile and artillery fire blazed around it. Asuka ignored the call from the Admiral on the Over the Rainbow and keyed the sensors to get her a better look at the Angel's mouth. As it leaped in the air, jumping over several low-flying missiles, she saw the Core through its open mouth. Asuka smiled and drew her progressive knife, focusing EVA-02's AT field as she did so.

As the Sixth Angel leapt to attack the next ship, the right arm of EVA-02 shot out, holding in its massive hand the knife. The blade flew from its hand, into the opening mouth of the Angel. It went all the way into the back of the Angel's throat, driving into the core all the way to the hilt. The Angel let out a cry of pain, and then slowly sank back into the sea, dead. As the monster returned to the depths, the cloaked robot looked on impassively, its makeshift cloak fluttering in the breeze.

The UN Navy protested the unauthorized involvement of EVA-02 in the battle, but they couldn't argue with the facts. The Navy had used millions of dollars of weapons and hadn't harmed the Angel. Asuka had taken it down with one move. With that said the fleet arrived in port and turned the Evangelion over to the First Branch of NERV officially. After that exchange had been handled, a submarine was sent to the battle site to try to recover the core of the defeated Angel.

A few hours later, Asuka was in Ritsuko's office, going through one of the routine health checkups that pilots had to go through regularly. As it was just about finished, the phone rang. Ritsuko picked it up and found it was a call from the Marduk Institute.

"What do you mean you've found a pilot candidate, but don't know where she is? Oh, I see. Maybe you could try using a new searching algorithm to track her down. Here's how you access it." With that, Ritsuko gave instructions on how to locate the program in question, then hung up.

"What was that about?" Asuka asked.

"It seems a strong candidate for the Fourth Child has been identified, but she changed addresses sometime after she was tested but before she was identified as a candidate. Perhaps the new person tracking software that Maya developed will help them locate her."

For some reason, Asuka found the concept of the tracking program to be interesting and asked Ritsuko to show it to her. After doing so, Ritsuko started filing the results of Asuka's physical. Just as she was about finished, she was startled to hear a long string of German obscenities.

"What was that about?" Ritsuko demanded.

"I told the program to track down a cousin of mine. She moved away when her parents changed jobs shortly before Mother's… illness. I wanted to find her so I could figure out exactly why she's never once called or written like she promised to, and look what the machine told me!"

Asuka had entered three names into the search program. The latter two names, apparently her Aunt and Uncle, had been located. They had apparently been found dead near a rare book collector's home in Austria roughly a month previous, along with over two dozen other dead bodies. All that was known about the killer was that the person who killed those two, along with some of the others, used a knife, while others had been shot to death by guns that were not among the weapons found among the fallen. But it was the first entry, the entry that corresponded to Asuka's cousin, that got Ritsuko's attention.

Target of Search: Langley, Chloe

Searching…

No Matches Found

"What are the odds," Ritsuko wondered, "that two Evangelion pilots would both have relatives that vanished without a trace?"

* * *

 

It had been obvious for months that Les Soldats had known exactly where Kirika and Mireille lived. The only reason they hadn't moved was that they knew the odds that they'd be able to move without being tracked to their new home within the week were virtually zero. Despite the fact that their enemies knew exactly where to find them, they had never been attacked in their home. Until tonight, that is.

The attack had begun with a hail of bullets coming in through their window. The two assassins escaped the bullet-ridden apartment and tried to leave through a fire escape on the other side of the building. They found men waiting for them at the bottom of the stairs, and heading towards them from the inside of the building as well. The attempt to escape quickly became an open battle on the rooftops.

Reinforced by the appearance of Chloe, who had joined in for reasons of her own, the last of the attackers were within ten minutes. Their bodies lay strewn across the rooftops, shot by Kirika and Mireille, stabbed by Chloe, and in some cases simply broken when they were thrown off the rooftops into the alleys below. The three killers faced each other, each waiting for one of the others to make the first move. That move was made by Chloe.

"Kirika… It is time for the Final Guidance." She said, holding out her hand. Understanding what she wanted without really knowing how, Kirika placed her gun in Chloe's hand. The green-cloaked girl then flipped the gun around, and fired one round at her. The bullet flew past her head, just barely missing her. But even though the bullet didn't strike her, Kirika found herself falling backwards.

As she landed on her back, memories started coming back to her. Most of them were about training, either with Chloe or a woman with brown hair. Somehow, she knew that the name of the woman was Altena. Then she recalled one memory that was most definitely not about training.

She was young in the dream, no more than four or five years old. She was walking in a yard, towards somebody's back patio. She entered the patio, and walked to a table where a man and woman were seated, a boy playing on the floor nearby. She walked towards them, and then produced a gun. The boy was swiftly gunned down, followed by the man. Then she turned towards the woman. The woman said something to her, she couldn't recall what. Then she pulled the trigger. As the woman fell to the ground, a watch was knocked from the table she was standing in front of. When the watch struck the ground, it opened, and started playing a hauntingly familiar tune. As Kirika turned and walked away from the bleeding corpses, she saw a young Chloe watching her from a distance and smiling.

The woman in that memory looked familiar for some reason, but she couldn't figure out why. Then she heard what Chloe was saying to Mireille, and the reason quickly became very clear.

"The person who killed your parents… Though I do not know her real name… Is currently known as… Kirika Yumura."

Realization hit Kirika like a thunderbolt. The reason the woman looked so familiar was because it was Mireille's mother. The resemblance was easily apparent know that she knew to look. The tune she had heard was from the watch that Kirika found in her apartment after losing her memories. A watch that was identical to the one that had once belonged to Odette Bouquet. As Kirika climbed back to her feet, she turned to look at her partner, and saw the look of betrayal in Mireille's eyes, as she realized that one of the few people she honestly trusted was responsible for single-handedly ruining her life. Kirika cringed under that gaze, slowly backing away, and then turned and ran, unable to face the horrible truth.

Kirika came to a halt in a graveyard. As she paused to rest, she saw that there were even more Soldats agents at this location. One of them came after her with a sword. Kirika dodged the first swing, grabbed a pick from the ground, and then spun around, swinging the pick into the man's groin. As the man collapsed to the ground, bleeding out from the severed artery, Kirika picked up the sword and went stalking the second man. A minute later, she snuck up behind him, cut him down with the sword, and took away his revolver. A third man was quickly shot. As she turned to face the fourth and final Soldat, he was dropped by a bullet fired by a third party.

Kirika turned to face her partner, who had apparently followed her. She took a breath, and then threw away her pistol.

"Mireille," Kirika began, "when we agreed to become partners, you said that once all the mysteries surrounding the two of us were solved, you would kill me. That time is now." Kirika spread her arms. "Shoot me."

Nothing happened. "Shoot me! Now!"

"Shoot!"

Mireille lowered her gun, and said "When next we meet, I will kill you." Then she turned and walked away.

Kirika suddenly realized exactly why Mireille hadn't fired. That promise had been made to a partner. By refusing to keep it, Mireille was severing that relationship. This wasn't an act of mercy, but an act of rejection. Isolated from most of the world by her profession, Kirika was now completely and absolutely alone.

Kirika called out to her suddenly ex-partner, pleading to her. "Mireille! Come back, please! YOU PROMISED THAT YOU'D KILL ME!"

Kirika collapsed to her knees, openly weeping for the first time that she could remember. She remained that way until long after Mireille had vanished, and it had started to rain.

As she knelt weeping in the rain, a fragment of a memory returned to her. Climbing to her feet, she started moving. She didn't know where she was going, and she didn't know why, but she somehow knew that she needed to travel southward. Perhaps the grief she felt in her heart could be eased when she got wherever she was heading.

* * *

 

A/N: Would Toji and Kensuke's stunt have gotten them a Darwin Awards Honorable Mention? Let's see… They went sight-seeing in a war zone during a battle they knew was going on. Competent authority (Hikari, and the Emergency Broadcast System) had told them clearly that they shouldn't go outside until the all-clear was sounded. The dangers were further reinforced by the fact that someone they knew had been seriously injured doing the same thing a month before, and was still in the hospital. That seems to be a Darwin-worthy act of stupidity, except for one thing. According to the rules laid down by Wendy Northcutt, who runs the Darwin Awards, children are not eligible for Darwins. As such, they are disqualified because they were only 14. Had they been 18, they'd have definitely gotten the Honorable Mentions their idiotic stunt deserved.

I think that even with the punch to the gut, Asuka and Shinji managed to start off on slightly better terms this time around. Shinji isn't spineless, but he didn't actually challenge her, he only defended himself. He's not an immediate threat to her status as most skilled pilot, but he isn't useless either. Asuka doesn't have any pressing reason to actively dislike Shinji, and so long as she doesn't try to punch him again, he doesn't have an active reason to dislike her, either.

It is possible to go from 'Never held a gun in my life' to 'minimally competent' in a week. People do it at Boy Scout camp all the time. You can't do that with martial arts. Even though truly mastering either skill takes a great deal of effort, the first step in marksmanship is much easier than the first step in hand to hand combat (Of course, the potential consequences if you screw up that first step in marksmanship are also much, much worse. It's a lot harder to get a permanent injury during lessons in a dojo than it is on a firing range).

That's right, Asuka is related to the third Noir. As to who killed the Langleys, all I'll say is that all the clues needed to figure it out are in this chapter and chapter three. The answer will come up in the story, but not for a long time.

I'm choosing to believe that the way Kirika's amnesia worked was that her memories of her time with Altena were blocked by hypnotic suggestion before she was put in a position where she would lure Mireille into the trials that Altena wanted all three Noir candidates (Or Saplings, as she called them) to undergo. The sight of Chloe firing a gun in her direction (But not hitting her. Even with that anime's tendency to not have people bleed, I refuse to believe that Kirika could take a bullet to the head and get up unharmed the next episode) was the release trigger for the suggestion, causing Kirika to start remembering. Of course, there's a second block on her – and on Chloe – preventing them from remembering their lives before Altena.


	5. Forging and Reforging Bonds

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 5

Forging and Reforging Bonds

"What do you mean two pilots?" Asuka demanded.

It wasn't until that moment that Ritsuko realized that her rhetorical question had been said out loud. However, now that the cat was out of the bag, Asuka was unlikely to let the point drop without some kind of explanation, Ritsuko walked over to the terminal, typed in a search request for Kirika Ikari and watched as a reply identical to the one given for the search for Asuka's cousin.

"Kirika… Ikari? As in Shinji Ikari?" Asuka asked.

"Shinji's sister. For some reason, the Commander decided to send his children to different guardians after his wife died in a lab accident ten years ago. At some point after that, she disappeared. The person assigned to be her guardian is dead, so we can't ask him how it happened." Ritsuko replied.

Asuka worked out the dates in her head, and realized that Shinji had lost his mother only a few months before she had lost hers. But before she could make any further connections on that subject, Ritsuko's voice intruded on her train of thought.

"Asuka, I don't want you speaking of this to anyone unless they bring up the subject first. The Third Child is unaware of the fact that his sister has completely vanished. Given how poorly he reacted when he learned that she was missing, he might not be able to pilot after that."

"So the Third Child doesn't have the nerve to handle some family troubles?" Asuka mused. Another point proving her superiority.

"ASUKA!" Snapped Ritsuko, "You are not to discuss what I have just told you to anyone, especially not the Third Child, without my permission. This is an order. Do you understand?"

Asuka gulped at the doctor's tone, and nodded.

* * *

After that checkup, Asuka was assigned to temporary quarters in the GeoFront until a permanent residence could be located for her. She was also instructed to attend the same school that Shinji did, despite the fact that she had already graduated from a college in Germany, and as such didn't need to attend high school. Kensuke was not happy to see the girl he thought of as the 'Red Devil' in his class, but he didn't let that stop him from taking pictures of her and selling them to all the other boys.

Asuka and Shinji had not spoken since they had reached Tokyo-3. It wasn't the result of any issue between them, it was just that they hadn't run into each other outside of school, and there she had been concentrating on getting to know the rest of her classmates. Asuka's attempts to get to know Rei turned out to be a total failure. After the two had introduced themselves, Rei had brushed Asuka off by stating that she was not under orders to befriend any of her fellow pilots, and so she would not bother to do so. Asuka found this statement to be offensive. Shinji found it mildly relieving, as it meant he wouldn't have to deal with the girl outside of his NERV duties. The rest of the class simply took it as further proof that Ayanami was weird.

With three Evangelions on base with functional pilots, it was decided that EVA-00 was to be taken out of service for a time in order to give it an overdue overhaul. As a result of this, when an alert that the Seventh Angel had been detected sounded five days after Asuka's arrival, Evangelion Units 01 and 02 were the only ones available to respond.

* * *

The two Evangelions dropped from the sky and landed on the beach. Support vehicles drove up behind them and attached power cables, then withdrew. Asuka looked out towards the ocean for the approaching target. The large, vaguely humanoid creature lumbered up the beach, practically heading towards them. A large red sphere was clearly visible on its chest. Asuka smiled. The latest enemy had the same bulls-eye weak point that the previous one did. Another quick kill and her status as the top pilot would be assured. She picked up a spear, noticing Shinji grab a rifle as she did so. Then she waited for the Angel to close enough to the shore that she could engage it at close range.

"I'm going in!" She shouted, charging forward. Ignoring Misato's calls to stay alongside Shinji and attack in some coordinated manner, she quickly closed the distance to her target. She then thrust forward with the spear, skewering the Angel through the core, then spun, throwing the impaled Angel off of her weapon and back into the sea. Her enemy vanquished, she triumphantly headed back towards the drop zone for extraction. The thrill of victory was short-lived, however, as her train of thought was interrupted by a call from Shinji.

"Get down!"

Not knowing why he had said that, but sensing from the urgency in his voice and reacting to the fact that he was aiming his rifle towards her, she dove forward. Moments later, a hail of bullets flew over her head, impacting with something that had been approaching from behind. Rolling to her feet, she saw that they were under attack by two smaller Angels that looked like scaled-down copies of the previous one.

"So, the big Angel had some kids, did it? Considering how easily their mommy went down, they shouldn't be a problem." Asuka grinned, then attacked one while the other was concentrating on Shinji. It only took twenty seconds to defeat it, and then headed towards the second enemy. But before she could close with her new opponent, the old one suddenly came back to life and attacked her from behind, severing the power cable and knocking away her spear before she could drive it back.

Shinji had similar problems. He was able to kill one Angel, but it would regenerate before he could get in position to attack the other. After the third time this had happened, his rifle ran out of ammunition, and he was forced to switch to melee combat, something he was far less suited for.

The tide quickly turned against the pilots. Without a ranged weapon, Shinji was barely able to hold his opponent off. Asuka was able to take her opponent down with her knife several times, but no matter how much damage she inflicted, she wasn't able to keep it down long enough for her to kill the second one as well. Eventually, she ended up running out of power, causing her Evangelion to shut down. The two Angels then tossed EVA-02 into EVA-01, taking both of them out of the fight; somehow merged together to form the original Angel that Asuka had taken down, and then started moving off in the general direction of Tokyo-3.

* * *

Misato groaned. With both Evangelions out of action, NERV had been forced to call in UN forces to deal with the Angel. After some rather smug responses, they had responded by dropping an N2 mine on it. The explosion had reshaped the landscape, destroyed a great deal of private property, and wounded the Angel, but didn't kill it. Fortunately, it appeared that the current Angel would require some time to recover from the attack. Misato had one week to figure out how to kill the thing. But first, she needed to plow through all this paperwork, which mainly consisted of various officials complaining about the fact that the war had spread to their turf and that the enemy hadn't rolled over and died when first confronted.

SubCommander Fuyutsuki had wanted to deliver the pilots a blistering reprimand for their failure. The only thing that had stopped him was that Misato and Ritsuko had reminded him that Shinji had no real loyalty towards NERV, and pushing him too far could lead to disaster. Especially since it looked like EVA-00 would not be ready for battle until after this issue was decided one way or another. Misato had taken Asuka aside and given her a stern lecture about her breaking formation without orders, however. Hopefully it would stick. Due to the separation of the Evangelion units and their pilots, there had been no real opportunity to train the pilots to operate as a unit up to this point. This was an issue that Misato resolved to deal with after this Angel was beaten.

Thinking over the way the battle had gone; Misato realized that the two pilots hadn't done that badly. Had their opponents been two individual Angels rather than one Angel with two bodies, their efforts to defeat each Angel individually would probably have worked. But every time that one of the sub-Angels was beaten, it would recover before the pilot that took it down could act to support the other pilot in defeating the second sub-Angel. And due to the fact that the pilots were effectively fighting two individual battles rather than one large battle, there was no point where both sub-Angels were down… at the same time…

Misato paused, and then called up a file that Kaji had sent to her. Initially, she had disregarded the plan because it had come from her former lover. But now that she thought about it, the plan might have some merit…

* * *

Two days had passed, and the pilots were getting extremely annoyed. The theory that they'd have to destroy both of the sub-Angels within an extremely narrow time frame in order to make them stay down was one that made sense. Training together so that they could best learn how to act in unison with each other so that they could land simultaneous final blows was a logical extension of that theory. Moving Asuka into the Katsuragi apartment in order to increase the amount of training time available was something that caused some friction, but they were able to deal with that. No, what was annoying them was the peculiar hybrid of Twister and Dance Dance Revolution that was the training method that Misato had come up with.

It was awkward. It was embarrassing. It made the totally unwarranted assumption that NERV could choreograph the Angel's attack pattern and create a counter-pattern a week in advance. When Kensuke and Hikari had stopped by to check up on why the pilots hadn't been in class, their clumsy attempts at interacting with their visitors in perfect unison had made the visitors collapse in laughter. After the two had left, the embarrassment had caused the synchronization of the pilots to drop from the previously poor level to downright awful.

Misato left the apartment, heading to NERV to deal with yet another round of paperwork. As soon as the Renault had driven away from the complex, the situation in the apartment degenerated into an argument. The argument quickly escalated into a fight. This time the fight ended in less than ten seconds, with Asuka once again victorious.

"What makes you think you can stop the Angels if you can't block a basic combo, baka?" Asuka mocked, "And who taught you that lousy stance?"

At the confused glance that Shinji returned, Asuka realized that he had spent so much time training in ranged combat that he hadn't been trained in some of the essential basics of close combat. In addition to that, Section 2 hadn't had the time to train him in how to protect himself outside of his EVA. She lowered her face into her hand and groaned in frustration.

Then an idea came to her. What better way to establish her superiority over the Third than to be the one who taught him everything? Straightening herself, she headed over to Shinji.

"This is how you do it," She said, slowly guiding him into a forward stance. "Now, here's a basic attack pattern…"

* * *

Misato returned to the apartment that evening grumbling under her breath. The Marduk Institute had tracked the new Fourth Child candidate to Paris, but within hours of that happening, the apartment where she lived had been attacked. The Fourth and her guardian had done an impressive job of defending themselves – the bodies of their attackers were scattered across every alley and rooftop in a path stretching out for five blocks – but the Fourth Child had disappeared after the battle. With the person they were trying to recruit missing, the Institute had not bothered speaking with her guardian. Misato hoped that the girl resurfaced soon. They couldn't afford another long delay to find a new pilot candidate, especially if some party was trying to kill them before they could be recruited by NERV.

But that wouldn't matter if the pilots already present couldn't learn to work in unison before the Seventh Angel recovered. Hopefully they had been practicing while she had been out. But instead of the two Children going through the sync drill, what she saw was Shinji on the ground while Asuka was boring into him with the skill of a veteran drill sergeant.

"No, no, NO! It's punch, punch, high block, low block, _then_ kick; not punch, punch, high block, kick. Now get up and try it again."

Misato watched in confusion as Asuka led Shinji back and forth through a basic hand-to-hand drill. After the third repetition, she made herself known.

"WHAT ARE YOU TWO DOING? I told you to do sync training while I was out, not sparring practice! How are you going to defeat the Angel if you can't work in unison?" She screamed.

Asuka looked at Misato. Then she walked to Shinji's side and entered a forward stance, which Shinji mirrored. Asuka called out "Pattern one", and then the two went through a very simple combat drill in perfect unison. Asuka then looked at Misato with a cocky smirk and replied "That way".

* * *

After spending half an hour plotting revenge against Kaji for proposing a training plan that wasted two days when the pilots themselves had come up with a better one in a matter of hours, Misato was forced to approve Asuka's method. She contacted NERV and arranged for one of Section 2's unarmed combat instructors to supervise the training starting the next morning.

Combat training restarted the next day. With a new trainer who didn't have Asuka's drill sergeant approach to teaching, the training proceeded without Shinji acquiring any new bruises. At the end of the week, the two Evangelions were ready for combat, and the pilots had six patterns they could use in perfect sync with each other. It was time to confront Israfel.

The two EVAs approached their opponent. Seeing two opponents, the Angel split into its two sub-selves. Just as it/they were about to attack, Asuka started calling out the battle plan.

"Three!"

The two Evangelions moved into a defensive stance and proceeded to deflect all of the incoming attacks.

"One!"

The Angel was driven backwards by a series of punches. When it tried to retaliate, its opponents fell back, blocking its blows all the way.

"Four!"

Roundhouse kicks smacked the Angel in the head, followed two quick punches and a snap kick to the core.

"Five!"

The Angel was kneed in the core twice, elbowed in the head, and then given a snap kick that knocked it away. It climbed to its feet and charged towards its enemies. But before it could connect…

"Six!"

The two Evangelions sidestepped the attacks, and then countered. At the end of the series of attacks, the two sub-Angels were back to back, with their enemies closing in.

"Two!"

Two punches forced the two sub-Angels to close the gap between them. Their last attempts at a counteroffensive were blocked, and then a pair of kicks caught them in the core. Smashed against each other and caught in a vise formed out of two Evangelion feet, the cores cracked and shattered. The Angel exploded.

As cheers erupted in the GeoFront, Asuka and Shinji headed back to base. They had defeated their adversary, but they had also accomplished something more important. They now knew that they could count on each other to stand with them in battle, and trust in their skills when that happens. Though the two had totally different reasons to fight the Angels, they both knew that their chances of winning had just gone up considerably.

* * *

Kirika journeyed southward and westward, hitching rides when possible, traveling by foot when it wasn't. Eventually she made her way to the base of the Pyrenees, the mountain range that separated France from Spain. Subconsciously knowing where she had to go without having the slightest idea of what was at the destination point, she started to climb.

Deep within the mountains, she eventually came to a small valley containing some ruins, a vineyard, and a manor house. No, Kirika realized, not _a_ manor house, _the_ manor house. This was the place where Les Soldats had been founded over a thousand years before. The place where Altena lived. The place where Kirika had been raised and trained to be a perfect killer. The place that, up until she had woken up in an apartment in Japan with no memories, she had called home.

Chloe had beaten her back. She greeted Kirika and escorted her into the manor. Altena was waiting there, welcoming Kirika home after her long journey. As Kirika was embraced by the woman who was mother, teacher, and leader to the Soldats-trained Noir, she recovered another buried memory. A memory in which a younger Altena handed her a gun and told her to go to Corsica and kill a family that had disobeyed her.

Over the next two days, Kirika returned to training with Chloe as she had before being sent out to lure Mireille into the trials. As her memories came back to her, so did the mindset she had been taught when those memories happened.

She was Noir, a hand of Les Soldats. Her purpose was to destroy those who betrayed the organization, and those who High Priestess Altena had identified as threats. Why should she care about the Bouquet family of Corsica? They had disobeyed orders, and received the only punishment that traitors deserved.

All the battles that had come before were test to prove that she was worthy of being Noir in fact as well as in name. After all, the only way to truly prove that someone could battle their way through any adversity was to provide that adversity and see if the subject could fight free of it. If the trials had not been battles to the death, they would not have been proper tests, and if she or any of the other girls chosen to become Noir had failed, then they were unworthy. There was only one trial remaining before the ritual consecrating her as Noir could begin.

Noir… it is the name of an ancient fate… Two maidens that govern death. _Two_ maidens, not _three_. Whenever Les Soldats attempted to create a new generation of Noir, they always selected more than two candidates, in the event that some of them would not survive the trials. But no matter how many made it through the trials, the title of Noir could only be granted to two, no more, no less. Thus the final trial, in which the candidates faced each other in a battle to the death until only the two strongest remained. Thus, in order to complete the trials, Chloe and Kirika would have to remove the extra: Mireille Bouquet, the daughter of the two who thought to defy Altena. As such, she was pleasantly surprised when on the afternoon of the third day, Mireille came to them.

Kirika began her attack the moment Mireille approached. Mireille dodged the shot, drew her own gun, and returned fire. The battle quickly turned into a lethal game of hide-and-seek, with both parties hunting the other in the maze formed by the old ruins, firing at each other whenever they saw their target.

Mireille might have been her equal at one point, but Kirika had three clear advantages over her. First, Kirika and Chloe had been trained for ten years under Altena. Mireille's teacher, Claude Feyder, while skilled, was nowhere near her equal as a teacher. Secondly, Kirika and Chloe had had the opportunity to further improve their training by honing their skills in tests against an equal (each other), an opportunity that Mireille never had. Finally, in addition to the superior training that Kirika had received, the battle was being fought in a place that she had lived for years. She knew the ground. Mireille did not. Coming to a large archway that had once been the front wall of a building, Kirika started climbing up one of the pillars, then crouched down in a nook at the top.

Mireille passed under the arch, slowly looking around for her opponent. Just as she was turning back towards the arch, Kirika leapt out at her. Mireille tossed something that was in her left hand up into the air, and tried to bring her gun to bear. Before she could do that, Kirika struck, knocking her to the ground. But before she could pull the trigger, the silver pocketwatch that Mireille had tossed up in the air struck the ground, popped open, and started playing a very familiar tune.

As the melody played, memories flashed before Kirika's eyes. Memories of Mireille assaulting the fortress of an African warlord alone to rescue a wounded Kirika from the men serving the warlord she'd just killed, even though Kirika had told her to write her off and save herself. Memories of Mireille comforting Kirika after Milosh's murder. Memories of Mireille being willing to kill her sole surviving relative to protect Kirika.

Kirika's mind flashed back to the day she killed the Bouquets. This time, she could recall what Oldana said to her before her death. There was no fear in Odette's eyes, no threats in her words. She had known exactly who had ordered her death, and why, and accepted it. And instead of trying to save her own life, Odette Bouquet's final action was to request that her murderess-to-be look after the daughter she would be leaving behind. The daughter that she had refused to turn over to Altena, knowing that she had sentenced herself to death in doing so. The same person who was being held at the point of the gun in Kirika's violently trembling hand. This wasn't an enemy. This was Mireille, her friend. The Beretta dropped from Kirika's nerveless fingers. Mireille looked up at her and said one word.

"Kirika…"

In that moment, Kirika knew that she had been forgiven. They were partners again. But before anything else could be said by either of them, a throwing knife flew out and struck the Walther out of Mireille's hand. Chloe had caught up to the two of them. Kirika's longtime friend looked at her and spoke in a cold tone that she had never heard her use in all the years they'd known each other.

"I will not let anyone stand in our path. Not even the one you used to call friend."

Mireille reclaimed her weapon and opened fire. Kirika stood, tears in her eyes, watching as her oldest friend and her partner dueled. Why was Chloe acting like this? They were just about to resolve their differences. There wasn't any need to fight anymore. Surely Chloe could see that. Why did she start a new fight?

As the two battled, Kirika's mind again revisited the moment of Odette's death. The woman's final words were now perfectly clear to her: "While it is true that love can sometimes destroy people, there is something else that you must never forget, that hatred can never save them."

How similar and yet how different to what Altena had always taught her pupils. The priestess had always claimed that if love could destroy people, then surely hatred could save them. As the duel reached its final stage, Kirika chose which path to walk.

"Hatred…"

One of Chloe's knives sprouted in Mireille's thigh, causing her to fall to the ground.

"Can never…"

Chloe walked towards her downed opponent.

"Save them!"

Chloe lashed out with a knife, seeking to cut Mireille's throat. In that same instant, Kirika grabbed her gun and fired off one round. As Chloe finished her swing, she suddenly realized that Mireille's throat was unmarked… and that her knife was two inches shorter than it was supposed to be. Chloe dropped the knife that Kirika's bullet had shattered, and turned towards her old friend.

"Why…?" She asked. "Why did you choose her? _How could you choose her! OVER ME?_ " Chloe threw a knife at Kirika, knocking the gun from her hand, and then charged; a second knife in her hand. Kirika caught the knife that had been thrown at her and started frantically blocking the enraged thrusts of her berserk colleague.

"Chloe, stop!" Kirika pleaded, continuing to defend herself.

"All of these months I've had to watch you living with _her. It should have been me._ _ **IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY CHOOSE HER OVER ME?**_ "

"Chloe, _please, stop!_ " Kirika begged, jumping back to separate them, dropping her knife as a sign of good faith.

Chloe did stop. With her left hand, she reached into a fold in the grey toga she was wearing and pulled out a small, two-tined fork. Kirika recognized that fork. The second time they'd met after her memory loss, Chloe had shown up at the door of Mireille's apartment. While making tea for their 'friendly' meeting, Kirika had slipped that fork up her sleeve as a makeshift holdout weapon. At the end of the evening, Chloe had removed the fork from Kirika's sleeve and asked if she could keep it. Kirika wondered why Chloe had held onto that fork for all these months. Chloe stared at the fork for a moment, and then tossed it aside. Then she charged, knife in hand. Towards Mireille.

Kirika started running towards Chloe as fast as she could, pausing to scoop up the fork along the way. Just as Chloe closed to within striking distance of Mireille, Kirika dove in front of her, rolled, and thrust upwards.

"W…Why…?" Chloe gasped. Then the oldest friend that Kirika could remember fell dead into her arms, the small dessert fork driven straight into her heart.

Kirika and Mireille picked up Chloe's body and carried it out of the ruins. They took it to a large stone slab on the outside of the ruins and laid it out there. Kirika then turned and wept in Mireille's arms. She'd only had three real friends in her entire life that she could recall. She had inadvertently killed Milosh by becoming his friend. Now a second friend, Chloe, was dead because of her, this time by her direct actions. But there hadn't been any other way, had there? If she hadn't, then her third friend, Mireille, would have died in Chloe's place. Why did her friends have to keep dying? Why did she have to be alone?

"Kirika," Mireille said, handing Kirika her gun back. "This isn't over yet." Kirika nodded, and then placed the bloodstained fork next to Chloe's head.

The two turned, and started towards the manor house. It was time that they dealt with Altena and her manipulations of their lives once and for all.

* * *

A/N: I never liked the fact that all of Asuka's training before coming to Tokyo-3 ultimately came to mean nothing, or the fact that all the effort that was spent to get Shinji and Asuka to work together to face the Seventh Angel went out the window at the end of the episode. This chapter was intended to make all of Asuka's years of effort actually mean something, and make an understanding between the pilots that would last longer than one battle.

When you get down to it, katas and kumite drills are intended to be done by groups of people in unison, and have much more in common with combat than the bizarre training that Misato came up with.

By restoring Kirika's memories, Chloe also restored Kirika's original, pre-Mireille personality. Kirika the Soldats Noir was a cold-blooded killer who makes Rei seem exuberantly expressive in comparison. It's a good thing that Mireille killed that part of Kirika's personality off – Shinji's going to have enough trouble when he meets Kirika Yumura without having to worry about _that_ monster.

Kirika, Mireille and Chloe all had equal potential at the time they were selected to become Noir. However, due to the difference in training programs, they didn't stay as equals. Mireille is the weakest fighter, while Kirika is the strongest. The gap in skill between Kirika and Chloe is nowhere near as large as the gap between Chloe and Mireille. That being said, Mireille appears to be the only one of the three with any training in operational planning or acquiring intelligence sources. As a result, despite being the weakest, there are things that she can do that the others can't.

The "Love can destroy, but hatred cannot save" philosophy seems apt in both Evangelion and Noir. Gendo's scenario, and the countless deaths it would bring about, stemmed entirely from his obsessive love for Yui. On the Noir side, Chloe's obsessive (and both unreciprocated and unnoticed – I don't think she even knew about it, even after Chloe kissed her while they were bathing before Mireille showed up, an act that Soldat Kirika didn't react to whatsoever) love for Kirika brought about her death. The whole point of Chloe's revelation about who killed the Bouquets was to set Kirika and Mireille against each other so that Chloe could become Kirika's partner, in both the professional and personal sense of the word. When her plan failed, she snapped.

If anyone is upset about Chloe meeting her canon end – please remember that in both Evangelion and Noir, the fact that a character is dead does not mean that their impact on the story is over.

If anyone is wondering why Kirika is openly crying over the death of somebody who tried to kill a friend of hers right in front of her, remember that 1: Chloe had been a friend, too, and 2: While Kirika has no problems with killing strangers, she has a harder time killing people she actually knows.


	6. Sapling or Child?

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion. Anyone stupid enough to think they own Noir won't live long enough to admit they were wrong.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 6

Sapling or Child?

Kirika and Mireille headed out of the ruins, heading for the vineyards that stood outside of the manor. As they approached the vineyard, they were spotted by several of Altena's subordinates. The moment they spotted the approaching duo, they immediately sounded an alarm and opened fire. Apparently Altena had figured out that if that particular pair of candidates survived the final trial, they wouldn't be interested in taking service with Les Soldats. It looked like they would have to fight their way to Altena.

Unfortunately for the women in the vineyards, grapevines don't make very effective cover against gunfire. Kirika and Mireille barely needed to break stride to deal with them and reach the manor proper. As they braced themselves against either side of the entrance before starting the assault, the two wordlessly agreed to give the people in the manor one chance to save themselves. They were only there for Altena, after all.

"We are Noir!" Kirika called out. "Those who fear to face the heart of darkness should stand aside!"

Five seconds later, the two spun into the open doorway and opened fire. It appeared that none of the Soldats in the manor had taken their advice. That was too bad… for them.

The two women cut their way through the defending Soldats like a hot knife through butter. Only one person managed to actually hold them off for a time, a testament to her skill with a sword and her sensible precaution of donning body armor before attacking. She actually managed to hold them off for two minutes.

Eventually the two made their way to the shrine in the basement. Altena wasn't here, but a passageway that Kirika had never seen before leading deeper into the manor was. At the other end of it they found a cave deep below the manor.

Altena was there, standing before a pit which contained something that radiated a great deal of heat. The two cautiously approached the woman. The priestess produced a pistol and aimed at the person she held responsible for ruining her plans to take control of Les Soldats. But as she fired, Kirika leapt in front of her partner, taking the bullet in her hip.

Kirika and Altena stared at each other. Even though she had intellectually accepted the fact that her pupil was now an enemy, Altena apparently had trouble grasping the fact that she had just deliberately taken a bullet for Mireille. Kirika, on the other hand, was recalling everything that Altena had meant to her over the years. She was the person who had taught her everything she knew. She was the person who was the closest thing to a mother that Kirika had ever knowingly had. She was also the person who ordered a five year old girl to murder an entire family for no reason beyond the fact that they loved their daughter. Before Altena could line up another shot, Kirika charged.

Kirika's elbow collided with Altena, knocking them both over the pit. As they started to fall, Kirika looked down and realized why the pit was radiating so much heat. It opened into a magma flow. Flailing desperately, Kirika managed to catch the edge of the pit with one hand. Altena managed to catch Kirika's foot. Feeling her grip slipping under the extra weight, Kirika started trying to kick her off. Eventually Altena fell, dropping into the lava below. But as she did, Kirika lost her grip. As she started to drop, a hand shot down and grabbed hers.

Kirika knew without looking that the person holding her up was Mireille, and wondered what would happen next. There was only one person involved in the death of her parents still alive. All she had to do was let go and her vengeance would be complete. It wouldn't even really be a crime. Mireille had promised to kill her once all the mysteries surrounding them were solved on the day they became partners, after all. Then a drop of water fell on the back of her hand. Kirika looked up, and saw tears in her partner's eyes. As she was pulled out of the pit, Kirika knew that she'd never be able to ask her partner to keep that promise ever again.

Wounded and exhausted, the two limped their way out of the manor, leaning on each other for support. As they made it outside, they saw a car that hadn't been there when they had come in. Apparently, Altena had summoned other senior members of Les Soldats to witness her triumph in creating the first Noir in over a century. Now they were standing witness to her downfall.

Mireille looked at the group of newcomers, and then said "If you fear to face the heart of darkness, then stand aside."

The group of six middle-to-early-old-aged men and their driver looked at each other, then the two battered women. They quickly realized that even in their current state, a fight with Noir would go very badly for them. They stood aside.

The two walked past the group of Soldats, and headed towards Mireille's car. Altena's death only removed the immediate threat from Les Soldats, not the entire threat. But the remainder of the organization was not willing to challenge them today, and for the moment, that was enough. Right now, Kirika had other things on her mind. Get back to Paris. See a doctor that Mireille knew about getting the bullet out of her hip and the knife wound in Mireille's leg stitched up. Go home. Have a cup of tea. Get some sleep. There might be new challenges facing them in the future, but at this moment, Kirika believed that she and Mireille would be able to handle them. Together.

* * *

 

After he and his colleagues watched Noir drive away, Remy Breffort contacted a nearby cell of Les Soldats and had them investigate the massacre that had happened in the valley. One thing was certain: Their hopes that Altena's plan for Le Grand Retour would not succeed had come true – but not in a manner they had hoped.

Altena had this idealist belief that Les Soldats should return to some idealized perception of how the organization had operated back when it was founded back in the tenth century. Breffort personally doubted that Altena's vision had ever been true. In order to influence the world, decisive actions had to be taken, and in order to do that, the one thing that was needed above all was power. But if Altena had succeeded in recreating Noir for the first time in generations, that would have given her the leverage she needed to take control of Les Soldats from Breffort and his faction.

The first attempts to derail Altena's plan had been to simply follow it. After all, the initial trials to become Noir involve surviving numerous battles to the death. All they had to do to get killers in striking range of the candidates was to agree to Altena's requests. All they would need to do in order to thwart her plan would be to succeed in eliminating any two of the three candidates, and her plan would fail.

Unfortunately, that plan backfired. All three candidates survived the trials set against them, costing Les Soldats several dozen trained men and gaining them nothing. When the final trial resulted in the partnership between two of the candidates falling apart, Breffort had taken a last chance to maintain supremacy of Les Soldats.

He had personally approached Mireille Bouquet, offering her the location of the manor, and with it the location of Altena and the other two Noir. In return, he asked that she kill either one of the two others, officially become Noir, and then terminate Altena at a later time of his choosing. In this way, Le Grand Retour could be aborted, and his faction would gain the services of Noir, and all the power that entailed.

Mireille's response was more direct than he had expected. Making a few deductions from what she saw on their one brief meeting, she had figured out exactly who he was, broken into his office at his personal estate, and extracted the coordinates from him at gunpoint. She then stated quite flatly that she didn't give a damn about the internal power struggles of his organization, as far as she was concerned they were all her enemies. He had managed to keep her from shooting him on the way out, so he had retained some hope that she might be influenced.

Judging from the carnage strewn around the manor, it seemed that Ms Bouquet had instead opted to reclaim her partner and exterminate anyone connected to Altena's faction that she could find. The two remaining Noir had apparently opted to remain free agents, possibly free agents with a grudge against Les Soldats. All that the best efforts of Les Soldats had accomplished was to create two deadly enemies. A pity. Breffort had already selected the first few people that he wanted Noir to eliminate. That man Keele and his organization had been taking far too much influence away from Les Soldats in the years since Second Impact, even if he still hadn't figured out exactly what the goals of that organization were. Ikari's reports on that matter were annoying inconclusive.

The investigative team arrived. A count of the bodies lying around accounted for all but two people. Identification of the bodies named the missing bodies as Altena and Chloe's. Speculation that Altena might have fled with her protégé died out when a man spotted a charred hand floating in a magma pit underneath the manor. While they didn't have the means to extract the body from the lava, the hair ribbon lying on the ground near the pit strongly implied that the body was Altena's.

As the investigators started searching the remainder of the valley for the one missing person, Breffort started thinking about what to do next. Under normal circumstances, the way to deal with the threat that Noir represented would be to have them terminated. Unfortunately, if they were easy to kill, Breffort's men would have done it months ago. Breffort thought about the list of professional killers in the world that could theoretically stand as the equals of the two women who had killed Altena. The list was not long.

The first name on the list was Silvana Greone, more commonly known as "La Intoccabile (The Untouchable One)". She was a mafia assassin who became head of the Greone family after murdering her grandfather in front of everyone else in the family. She had attempted to kill the two renegades after they had killed her father. Their final confrontation in Sicily ended with her dagger broken in two by a bullet, and the broken blade shoved into her stomach.

The next name on the list was Shao Li, the "Cold-Blooded Killer." She was a Triad assassin in the service of the Hong Yiban syndicate. Most of the people that ran into her never realized that she was an assassin, and shrugged off the light scratches that they received from her carefully sharpened fingernails as a minor accident from an unintended collision. By the time they realized that she used a cyanide-based nail polish, it was usually too late for medical intervention to do any good. Her path had crossed that of all three Noir when they had all accepted a contract against a Soldat agent in the Triad who had betrayed Les Soldats. During that conflict, Shao Li had made the fatal mistake of attacking Chloe. Shao Li quickly learned that being able to kill with one scratch doesn't matter if you aren't fast enough to hit your target, and that knives are just as deadly as poison.

The third and final name on the list was Chloe. As she had trained alongside Kirika for years, she was the equal or near equal of the deadlier of the two renegade Noir. Unfortunately, just as Breffort started considering her, one of the investigators reported that they had found her body, with a pair of small of holes in her chest matching the blood-stained fork lying next to the corpse.

No, it appeared that the world had a shortage of people capable of murdering world-class assassins at the moment. And trying to have them arrested would be useless. While there was physical evidence connecting Noir to various murders they had committed, at Altena's insistence, Les Soldats had arranged for all of it to disappear. After all, having their agents provably connected to a crime would limit their ability to move around. They couldn't make the evidence reappear, it had been gone long enough that chain-of-custody rules would render it inadmissible in court. And even if they did have usable evidence, the fate of the last twenty cops to try to arrest Noir left no doubt that anyone trying to repeat that mistake wouldn't survive it either.

On top of the problems inherent with either plan, there was also the unfortunate fact that Noir knew who he was and where he lived. The only reason that they hadn't tried counterattacking at any point during the trials was the fact that the only Soldats agents that Noir had encountered at that stage were the low-level agents who were their immediate opponents. They didn't have any targets to mount counterattacks against. That was no longer the case.

It appeared that there were no options available for dealing with Noir at the moment. Breffort got up, left orders to have the bodies buried, then he called his driver and he and the remainder of the Soldats inner council went home.

* * *

 

It had been a physically and emotionally exhausting day, at the end of two physically and emotionally trying weeks. Despite that, Kirika was unable to get any sleep on the trip back. The bumpy ride through mountain back roads was a major contributor to this, as was the bullet still lodged in her hip. The pain as the bullet moved about in her wasn't the most unpleasant experience she had ever had – that dubious honor went to the time she was shot in the side and then repeatedly kicked in that side while the bullet was still inside – but it was easily enough to keep her from drifting to sleep on the long journey from the Spanish border to Paris.

It was nearly dawn by the time they made it back to the city. Thanks to the bullet shifting position within the wound during the trip, treatment of their injuries took a long time. By the time they actually made it back home, it was 8 AM. When they made it into the apartment, which was still a mess from the attack two weeks earlier, they were so wasted from fatigue and the effects of morphine that they could barely stand. Deciding that the tea could wait, they staggered to their beds and collapsed.

Neither had noticed that somebody had been watching their apartment to see if they had returned.

* * *

 

A buzz awoke her. Kirika opened her eyes wearily and looked around. Her eyes slowly focused on a wall clock and noted the time. It was eleven in the morning. She struggled to her feet and made her way to the door panel. The morphine shot she had received while getting the bullet probed out was wearing off, she had only managed to get three hours of sleep in the past twenty-four, and some idiot kept pushing the door buzzer. Kirika was sorely tempted to let the visitor in, kill him on the spot for waking her, and go back to bed.

She pushed the talk button and wearily grunted "Go away."

The person on the other end of the line didn't react to the obvious statement that visitors weren't welcome at the moment.

"I'm sorry for disturbing you, but we need to speak with a Ms Kirika Yumura. It's a matter of considerable importance."

Kirika cut the com and stepped away from the panel. Why would people need to speak with her? It wasn't as if she was very well known in the area. As she turned around, she took a glance out the ruined window and saw several police cars parked outside and her blood turned to ice.

There was only one reason Kirika could think of for police to be asking about her. The only question was which incident they were trying to arrest her for. Most of the jobs she had worked hadn't left any witnesses to identify her… except for that Soldat assassin that she had pithed with a disassembled toy truck in the middle of the street. There had been civilian witnesses to that one, and there had been no real option of dealing with it other than slipping away in the confusion and hope that nobody had gotten a clear look at her. That had been months ago. She had hoped the police had shelved that case by now. Apparently they had not. Somehow, Kirika didn't think the fact that Noir had done more to clean up corruption in the police forces of France in the past year, at both the local and national levels, than their internal affairs departments had done in the past five would get them much sympathy from a judge.

Kirika woke up Mireille and quickly explained the situation. Exhausted or not, she became fully alert when informed of what was happening. The two quickly gathered a few essentials in order to be able to access their out-of-country accounts, and tried to sneak out of the building. As they started climbing to the rooftops, they noticed something odd about the deployment of the police cars. This deployment wasn't a very good one for keeping someone in, it was far more appropriate for keeping other people out…

A noise caught there attention. The two promptly spun towards it, guns in hand. There on the rooftops was another perimeter, manned not only by the police, but by the United Nations Combined Military Forces as well. This was strange. The only reason the UNCMF would be interested in their capture would be if their identity as Noir was totally compromised, and some ally of a former target of theirs had called in some political bargaining chips for backup. But if that was the case, they wouldn't have bothered with ringing the door buzzer; they'd have just blown the door off its hinges and stormed the apartment while they slept. And why would the soldiers and police who spotted them be lowering their weapons upon recognizing them?

An officer spoke into his radio. "We've found them." He then addressed the two women. "I'm glad to see that you're alright, Ms Yumura. The UN has been looking for you for the past two weeks. There are some very important people who need to speak with you."

Now Kirika was extremely confused. What was going on?

* * *

 

There were a number of important officials waiting for them on the ground floor, who followed them back to their apartment. They seemed to be delighted that Kirika had survived the rooftop battle from two weeks previous, and were under the impression that she had been in hiding from the parties responsible since then. They also seemed to get upset whenever they looked at her outfit. Kirika couldn't really blame them for that. The founders of Les Soldats had decreed that an almost indecently short gold toga with silver jewelry (silver with gold jewelry for the second member) be used as ceremonial wear for Noir back in the tenth century, and the uniform had not been altered since then. What would have been the height of fashion in the court of the Caesars was now only appropriate wear for a costume party. Kirika tried explaining that the toga was the only thing she could find that was her size in the place she was hiding out after her previous outfit was ruined and that she hadn't had a chance to change since, but that wasn't the reason they were upset. What was upsetting them was the fresh bullet hole in the toga.

The officials were outraged that somebody would shoot at who they referred to as one of the great heroes of their age. Kirika and Mireille realized that they had no clue what they were talking about. They obviously weren't referring to Noir, and there wasn't anything else that Kirika had ever been that would attract attention from anyone of note. Mireille sat the officials around the pool table that she used as a work desk and asked what they were talking about while Kirika went to the kitchen to start a pot of tea. It was obvious that the two wouldn't be getting any more sleep that day, and they would need the caffeine.

The officials started talking about the Angel War taking place in Japan. Kirika and Mireille had been aware of it happening, but hadn't paid it much heed. Wars between humans tend to generate war criminals, and more importantly, people willing to pay to have them eliminated. As such, paying attention to those wars was another way of looking for business opportunities. Wars against 100 meter tall monsters weren't likely to generate work, and even if they did, creatures that shrug off assaults from nuclear warheads weren't likely to be easily killable by two women with 9mm handguns. They simply hadn't considered it important from their worldview.

As Kirika started serving the tea, they started talking about the Evangelions, the enormous war machines that had been created to defeat the Angels. About how they could only be piloted by a small group of people, a group so small that the odds that any given person could be a pilot were literally hundreds of millions to one against. And that Kirika had been identified as the fourth person out of the three billion people in the world capable of being a pilot.

After Kirika had changed into something more appropriate for going out, the two were taken to a physician in the pay of the UN. By the time that they returned to the apartment, somebody had replaced all of the shot-out windows, and a more discreet police watch was looking over the neighborhood. The officials told them that they would be looking forward to hearing when Kirika would be ready to report for duty, and left.

Kirika only vaguely remembered being tested as a pilot candidate. This wasn't due to the memories that she had lost, just the fact that it hadn't really seemed important at the time. To her, it was just some strange medical examination that she had had to go through while at school back in Japan. She hadn't really cared what it was about, as she was concerned with more pressing issues, like who she was and why people were trying to kill her. Now it suddenly was a very important issue.

The people from the UN were under the impression that the fact that she had been selected for this job meant that she was automatically going to take it. In truth, being part of an incredibly select group of world-renowned individuals was not something that appealed to her. Being world-renowned was a liability in her given career. While Noir was technically a highly select and world-renowned group, it was the name that was famous, not the people who used it or the faces of the people who used it. The pilots would likely become famous as individuals, not faceless entities using a famous label. If she became famous as an individual, then she'd be easily recognizable, and that was something she'd rather avoid.

Kirika and Mireille had just finished getting out of a situation where the fate of an organization that controlled a sizable fraction of the world from the shadows rested on their actions. They hardly wanted to get into a situation where the fate of the world depended on them a second time. Unfortunately, before they could come up with a polite way to decline this honor, an unforeseen factor came into play: French nationalistic pride.

France and Germany had been rivals ever since Otto von Bismarck had managed to unify the Germanies from a group of principalities and minor kingdoms that spent most of their time arguing with each other into a real nation. Since that point, they had gone to war with each other three times. In the Franco-Prussian war, the Germans achieved total victory, breaking France's status as a continental power and seizing two French provinces as spoils of war. In the First World War, the French were only able to hold off the German offensive with the help of the British, and were only able to drive them off with the additional help of the Americans. And in the Second World War, Germany managed to completely conquer the country in six weeks, and had kept control of the country until the Allied counteroffensive four years later.

Even though there was no open combat between France and Germany in the Angel War, Germany had still managed to upstage the older nation. The location of the European headquarters of NERV was in Germany, not France. As a result of that decision, the lion's share of the highly lucrative contract work to build the Production Model Evangelion Unit 02 was given to German companies, along with the funding to build two MAGI class supercomputers. All France received from those projects were a handful of the component subcontracts. To add further insult to injury, the second person to be selected as a pilot was from Germany (Technically she was American, but the Second Child had been raised as a German, and that was what mattered). Said pilot was currently the second ranking pilot, with one and a half kills to the Third Child's three and a half, and the Germans were certain that the gap in kill scores between the two would have been much narrower or even reversed had the Second Child been present during the first four Evangelion sorties.

The French as a whole were upset that their rivals were playing a key role in protecting the world from the Angel threat while they were not. As a result, once the fact that a pilot had been found in Paris leaked to the French media two days after Kirika was informed of her selection, things got out of hand. Kirika was immediately touted as the heroine who would redeem the honor of the French people (The fact that she was a Japanese citizen who coincidentally happened to be living in France at the time she was selected was ignored). Pictures of Kirika (Thankfully not in the toga) were displayed in the news and the paper, and all hope of Kirika remaining anonymous suffered an abrupt death.

Three days after the story leaked, Kirika was so well known that she couldn't step outside without being recognized. The entire country was under the impression that she would pilot, and that the only reason that she hadn't gone off to war already was because she was recovering from the injuries she had taken while fighting off her unknown attackers, who were being rapidly vilified. It was beginning to look like there was no way for her to refuse the job without having the entire country turn against her.

Mireille contacted the UN officials and got a list of all the benefits that Evangelion pilots received. The immediate salary wasn't very impressive, but that was because the bulk of a pilot's paycheck was stored in a trust fund that couldn't be accessed until the age of eighteen. The overall salary was quite generous, and since Mireille knew some ways to drain off the trust fund into accounts that could be used, they could use that money to give them new faces and identities somewhere after leaving Tokyo-3.

The public recognition brought from piloting Evangelion could be used to their advantage as well. The world was under the impression that the pilots were the champions of the human race against the Angels. As a result, people who tried to harm them would be seen as traitors to all humanity. Les Soldats wouldn't dare come against them while they were in Tokyo-3. Their pervasive influence wouldn't be of any help to them if the world as a whole knew of them and thought they were trying to destroy the world. And after the war was over, the two could slip away, create new identities for themselves, and restart their lives elsewhere with their reclaimed anonymity.

Kirika contacted the UN and let them know that she was willing to pilot for them on the condition that a place in NERV was found for Mireille. There was some initial balking at the nepotistic request, but after Mireille took the entire Section 2 security team assigned to the officials sent to speak with them to a firing range and beat them all in a challenge match, they changed their minds. After all, having the guardian of a pilot be part of her security detail would make protecting her much easier. And if they arranged for the Fourth Child to live in the same apartment complex as the Second and Third Children, then they would also gain additional protection for them as well. A place was found for Mireille in Section 2.

Two weeks after their return to Paris, Kirika Yumura officially became a member of UN-NERV, to be assigned to NERV HQ in Tokyo-3. Claiming to have security concerns about a public farewell, Mireille managed to get the two of them flown out without any kind of publicity stunt with various politicians making dramatic speeches in the hopes that trying to associate themselves with Kirika would help their reelection chances. As such, by the time that the people of France were informed that 'their' pilot was leaving for the front, Noir had already left the country.

* * *

 

Breffort was not amused by the news of Noir. By becoming an Evangelion pilot, Kirika had made herself untouchable. There was no way to attack her directly without drawing far too much public scrutiny, and Noir was potentially in a position to damage Les Soldats severely, as the trials could now be seen as an assault on a pilot candidate. The only good thing to come of this was that the position also meant that he had a spy in place that could not possibly be prevented from keeping track of Noir's actions. As Kirika's commanding officer, Gendo Ikari had both the resources and absolute need-to-know that would enable him to follow everything she did. He'd have to send Ikari a message to do that.

Further musing was interrupted by the arrival of Dr Descroix, a scientist in the service of Les Soldats.

"Excuse me, sir, but my team has recently come up with a project that I think you would find useful." He said.

"Yes, doctor?" Breffort motioned him to go on.

"You see, we've been going over some of the technical data that we've been able to acquire from GEHIRN and NERV. We think there's a way to combine the personality imprint mechanism used to create the MAGI systems with some of the biotechnology used to create the Evangelions." The doctor then went on to describe the proposal in some detail.

Breffort found the proposed project to be quite intriguing. If it worked, then Les Soldats would be able to recover a great deal of the strength they had lost from the aborted Le Grand Retour project.

"How many units could you make?"

"Theoretically, there's no upper limit to the number we can have. However, we're not sure what would happen if we try to have two units from the same template active at the same time. Despite this, we can use the active unit to keep the backups up to date, and replace the active unit whenever something happens to it with a backup."

So he could only have one at a time, but could replace them indefinitely. That was good enough.

"Your project is approved, doctor. Start gathering what you need. This program shall be referred to from now on as… Le Petit Retour."

* * *

 

Two weeks had passed in Tokyo-3. After their victory over the Seventh Angel, Shinji and Asuka had been put through joint training simulations against some of the earlier Angels. Now that the two knew what each other was capable of, they started plowing through the simulations, developing strategies where Asuka would neutralize the AT field of the enemy and engage close range, while Shinji would provide long range fire support. By the middle of the second week, it had reached the point where Shinji could use ranged fire to maneuver the simulated Angels into positions where Asuka could take them down, and Asuka could line the Angels up in Shinji's line of fire while fighting, and get clear just before Shinji opened fire. The pilots were starting to become an actual unit. But despite the efforts of Misato, Rei remained an outsider to the group.

Asuka had been upset about the fact that she was not allowed to take time off from her duties to attend the class trip, but Misato's logic in denying that request was proven when the Eighth Angel was discovered in an active volcano. Seeing the chance to capture an embryonic Angel alive, the Evangelions were dispatched to Mount Asama.

EVA-02 was lowered into the volcano and used to contain the Angel into a special cage. But as the cage and Evangelion were being winched back out of the volcano, the Angel awakened and started fighting its way free of its confinement. Grabbing her own progressive knife and catching the one Shinji dropped down to her, Asuka was able to pry open Sandalphon's carapace and remove the core, dropping it into the volcano.

Unfortunately the Eighth Angel had managed to get in a few blows of it's own. The remaining cables were neither strong enough nor connected to enough winches to pull Auska back out, and the additional damage to the D-type equipment made it so it would soon lose its ability to cool down EVA-02. She had no choice but to drop the knives and try to climb out of the magma chamber manually. It was slow going but she made it before the coolant system broke down completely.

Out of the lava, but not on solid ground yet, part of the rock face crumbled under Eva-02's grip. Auska fell away from the wall plunging towards a swift and fiery death. Before she hit her fall was suddenly halted. EVA-01 was bent over across the lip of the volcano and had caught her Unit by the arm.

Asuka dangled above the lava for half an hour while NERV engineers jury-rigged a new harness to pull both Units back the rest of the way out of Mount Asama. After they succeeded and Asuka was out of the plug, Misato let out a sigh of relief as the girl was led to the medical unit so she could be checked for possible heat stroke. She had the sinking suspicion that if Rei had been there in Asuka's place, Shinji would have let her fall.

After the battle, Misato had taken the pilots to a nearby hot springs resort. Given the temperature her entry plug was at when they finally pulled her out, it wasn't that hard to figure out why Asuka decided that she'd had enough of soaking in hot liquid and left the spring after only a few minutes. Misato, who had spent the day in an air-conditioned command vehicle, was more inclined to linger.

As Misato relaxed, she considered the pilots. Shinji and Asuka were turning out to be an excellent team, despite their somewhat rocky introduction. But Rei was not fitting in. Shinji still avoided her whenever possible, and Asuka wasn't much better. Getting Shinji to work with Rei was an exercise in futility, and joint exercises with Rei and Asuka so far were only successful with the most basic of tactics. Things were looking up, but Misato wouldn't be able to really feel confident that they would win the war until they could deploy all three Evangelions as one unit, rather than a pair and one independent operator.

An attendant approached the pool. "Excuse me, Ms. Katsuragi, but you have a phone call."

Misato reluctantly left the pool, put on a towel, and headed for the phone. It was Ritsuko.

"Hi, Rits. Sorry we couldn't bring the Angel in alive."

"Yeah, I had a lot of experiments I wanted to perform on a living specimen. But that's not why I called. The Fourth Child has resurfaced in Paris. She's agreed to pilot, and will be arriving in a few days."

"That's great! I'm sure the other pilots will be glad to hear this."

"I just wanted to give you a heads up on this. Be seeing you." With that, Ritsuko hung up. Smiling at the welcome news, Misato returned to the hot spring.

It never occurred to Misato that she had never once heard the Fourth Child's name. Even if she had, she would have assumed that the odds that the Kirika who disappeared from Shinji's life years ago was the same person as the Kirika who was coming to Tokyo-3 were too slim to consider and that the name was a coincidence. She would have been wrong.

* * *

 

A/N: When I originally came up with the idea for this story, this was about the point where I planned to have chapter one. However, I realized that without going back to explain exactly how the Noir related events effected the kind of person Shinji had become, the story would make no sense. Now I have finally reached the point where the two threads start intertwining.

When you get down to it, ultimate fault for Altena's plan failing lies directly on Altena's shoulders. If she had honored the letter and spirit of the Bouquet's decision, Mireille would never have met Kirika, and Kirika and Chloe would have become Noir without any trouble. If she had completely ignored the Bouquet's decision and had Claude deliver Mireille to her after their deaths, then Mireille would have been indoctrinated alongside Kirika and Chloe and never thought of defying Les Soldats. When she decided to follow the letter of the Bouquet's decision while destroying its spirit by having Claude train Mireille to be Noir without telling her about Noir or Les Soldats, Altena created a highly skilled outsider and put her in a position to influence the other candidates. That is why Altena's plan failed.

Apparently, successfully creating Noir would automatically grant the person responsible absolute authority over all of Les Soldats. That may be due to some ancient tradition of theirs, but a more practical reason as to why would be that she who commands the deadliest assassin team in the world can dictate terms to whoever she likes.

Remy Breffort may or may not be the leader of his faction of Les Soldats. I am assuming that he is due to the fact that he is the only senior member of Les Soldats other than Altena to be given a name. Since Mireille was able to identify him from the custom-made cane he carries, he must be a semi-public figure at the least.

The destruction of all physical evidence from the crime scenes of Noir's activities was necessary because 1: NERV is a high security military/government post. 2: When you get a job with the military or any civilian position involving classified material, you get fingerprinted. 3: Neither member of Noir is in the habit of wearing gloves while working. If somebody realized that Kirika's prints were a perfect match for some found on a fork that somehow ended up getting embedded in a man's brain stem in episode 4 of Noir, things would get complicated very quickly. So the fork (And various other items, like the discarded pieces of a certain toy truck) had to disappear.


	7. The Fourth Child

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir.

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 7

The Fourth Child

Dr Descroix looked over the report discussing the current status of the Le Petit Retour project. He'd been able to gather a significant portion of the equipment and materials needed for the project, but there was one critical item missing that he needed to acquire before the project could actually start. That was why he was meeting with Breffort again.

"What is it Doctor?" Breffort's tone made it clear that he had better have a good reason for requesting a second meeting so soon after the previous one.

"We have gathered most of the material we need to begin the Le Petit Retour project. After examining the remains of the initial selection for the template, we have found that the tissue is in excellent condition and we are already creating a tissue culture for cloning. We don't have a cloning tank of a size capable of creating a new body, but we do have the plans for scaling up some of the tanks used for mass producing bacteria and simple plant tissue by some of the companies we have influence over. We should have a tank large enough to be of use to us within the month.

"The personality imprint system we already have in place. We were fortunate in that the chosen subject had been used in a test of the system a few months ago. Once we have a body, we can download the personality matrix into it whenever we wish. The memories of the subject won't be totally up to date, as the imprint was taken some time before the subject's demise, but that shouldn't matter. We also have commissioned a full-body myostimulation device to condition the clone's body to the same physical condition as the original. But there is one problem.

"According to the research we acquired from NERV, in order to prevent a clone, made from a lifeform more complex than the ones manufactured by our biotech subsidiaries from suffering from deterioration, we need to add a stabilization factor to the tissue culture. There is only one stabilization factor mentioned in the reports that is proven to work. Unless we wish to spend several years trying to find a new factor, we will need to acquire a tissue culture of Angel DNA from NERV before the project can proceed."

Breffort appeared to consider this, and then nodded. "Thank you for bringing this to my attention, Doctor. Continue assembling the equipment you need. Dismissed."

After the doctor left, Breffort considered where he could possibly get a piece of an Angel. While Soldat-controlled companies were involved in making components for the Evangelions, those components were all in the mechanical areas. Most of the NERV branches were out, as well. SEELE had done a good job at keeping his agents out of them. The only branch that Les Soldats had managed to penetrate significantly was NERV HQ in Tokyo-3, and that was mainly because Ikari had been their man since before Second Impact, and they could use him to slip agents in. Outside of a couple in the Berlin branch of GEHIRN that was forced to transfer out in order to facilitate an early stage of Le Grand Retour (And were killed in a late stage of it), the only Soldat agents in NERV branches outside of Tokyo-3 had started there and transferred to the other branches. And those were few and poorly positioned. If Angel tissue was needed, it would have to be obtained from Tokyo-3.

Using Ikari to get the sample would be the easiest method, but also the riskiest. As Supreme Commander of NERV, he was under the direct scrutiny of SEELE. While he might have the authority to obtain a sample and do whatever he wanted with it, it might invite questions as to why that could compromise his position. And if Ikari was removed from his position, Breffort did not have any candidate to replace him likely to get approved by the UN. No, first he would send a message to some of the lower level agents in place to see if it was possible to get the sample through a less conspicuous method first. Ikari's involvement in the acquisition should be kept to a minimum.

* * *

The flight from Paris to Tokyo-3 was uneventful. Kirika and Mireille spent the flight going over what information was available concerning the Angels and the Evangelions at their need-to-know level. Upon arriving, they were greeted by a security team from Section 2. They were quickly taken to a car and driven to the GeoFront. Once there, the two were escorted to the Commander's office.

The first thing that came to the minds of Noir was that they had fought battles in areas smaller than this office. The place was enormous. The apparent size was made much larger by the lack of furnishings. Normal offices tended to be decorated with various items, either tools for their current work or trophies from previous jobs. But there were no bookcases holding reference manuals, no filing cabinets containing important documents. The walls did not have any photographs, diplomas, certificates or memorabilia hanging from them. Apart from the Commander's desk, the only decoration visible was a strange symbol painted on the floor, which appeared religious but was not familiar to either of them.

As they approached the Commander's desk, they noted the absence of extra chairs. That actually made the lack of other furnishings more understandable. The size of the office was meant to intimidate people due to the importance that size implied. The total lack of furnishings was intended to emphasize that size, and keep any visitor's attention focused to the one occupied point in the room – the Commander's desk. The missing chairs meant that no visitor would ever be offered a seat, and that made friendly meetings highly unlikely. One look at the Commander, who watched the approaching duo with his hands folded in front of his face without moving a muscle confirmed their observation. This was a man who sought to dominate and control.

Gendo Ikari stared at the two for a moment, then addressed Kirika. "Pilot Yumura."

"Sir." Kirika replied.

"You will report to Dr Akagi for a full physical. Once you have been cleared as fit to pilot, you will be assigned to Captain Katsuragi's command. She will inform you of your training schedule once it is ready. Ms. Bouquet."

"Sir." Mireille replied.

"You are assigned to Captain Arima's command. You are to report these at once. That is all."

The last sentence was clearly meant for both of them. The two turned and walked out. After leaving the office, the two had to wonder – why had the Commander insist that they meet in person just to explain their postings? He could just as easily had those orders passed on by a junior officer the moment they entered the base. Arranging to meet new hires in person just to exchange a total of ten sentences with them wasn't a good use of a Commander's time, even if one of those new hires was filling a critical position. And given that Kirika was only the fourth person that NERV could find in a population of three billion capable of filling that critical position, one would expect that he'd want to spend more time with her. They wordlessly agreed that they'd need to talk about what they observed at NERV later in the day as they parted to head for their separate destinations.

* * *

Captain Arima of Section 2 appeared to be far more sociable than Commander Ikari was. He explained that Kirika had been assigned to quarters in the same building as two of the other pilots, and would be going to the same school. Mireille's main duty was to stay close to her ward when she was not actually in school or the GeoFront, so as to provide a close guard that most people would disregard. She was also to serve as guard over the other two pilots staying in the building whenever she was in their general area. Mireille didn't have the heart to explain that unless the rest of the security team she worked with were ex-Special Forces, the entire team, Mireille included, wouldn't be the equal of the girl they would be guarding.

After getting checked on her sidearm, Mireille was told to go to city hall and fill out some paperwork concerning her status as a foreign national working in Japan. Then she was to get herself set up in the apartment that she had been assigned.

City hall was bustling at the time that Mireille arrived. A meeting of the city council was about to start and council members were rushing back and forth between various offices, picking up various reports that they would use to back up their own arguments on certain issues or refute the arguments of others. As one of the councilmen passed Mireille, a sheet of paper fell out of a folder he was carrying. Mireille picked up the paper and glanced at it.

The paper was an email, with the header stating that it had come from NERV. It listed numerous issues that were going to be brought up at the meeting and how NERV wanted the councilman to vote. While Mireille was highly familiar with the concept of corrupted officials, the scale shown by the variety of issues discussed on the message was something new to her. NERV was apparently trying to get control over virtually everything in the city.

Since the council meeting was an open session, Mireille decided to observe it while filling out the various forms. While doing so, Mireille kept an eye on the official who had dropped the paper and the paper itself. It was an interesting experience. Sometimes the official would champion the cause he had been instructed to back, and would convince everyone else to agree to it. Sometimes he would come out supporting an opposing resolution, and would allow himself to be convinced to agree to the original position. Yet other times he would let other people propose various solutions, then come up with a compromise solution that just happened to be the one he had been ordered to get passed.

But no matter how the debates progressed, the same thing happened every time. If the issue being discussed was mentioned on the email, then the decision made by the council was invariably the one decreed in the email. And the only issues brought up by the council that were not on the email were trivial matters such as whether or not to sign the minutes of the previous week's meeting.

There was only one way that this could be possible as far as Mireille could tell: The entire council had received similar instructions, and this entire meeting was just a choreographed farce to present the illusion that the council was actually doing something other than parroting someone else's decisions. NERV wasn't trying to control the city – they already did.

The strange thing was that most of the things on the day's agenda weren't matters that an organization dedicated to fighting off monsters was likely to care about. So why did NERV want to have such absolute control of the community?

* * *

Ritsuko Akagi began her examination of the Fourth Child. With her arrival, NERV was finally safe from the consequences of Shinji suffering a second collapse. Hopefully there wouldn't be an incident due to the fact that the Fourth happened to have the same first name as the Third's missing sister. As she started the examination, Ritsuko kept having this sensation of déjà vu. She couldn't figure out why, but something about the girl was extremely familiar. It wasn't just the coincidence about the name.

Shaking her head, Ritsuko forced herself to focus on the task at hand. Kirika's body dimensions were nearly identical to Rei's. That meant that that they could have the Fourth use a spare plug suit of the First's until some new ones could be commissioned for the Fourth. That was good news. The implications of another observation were definitely bad news. The reports sent from the European branch of NERV stated that the Fourth had been wounded while dealing with the unknown parties that had attacked her shortly after she had been identified as a pilot. The report had not mentioned the bullet scars on her side or right arm. Nor had it mentioned the thin scar at the base of her throat that stated that somebody had once tried to strangle her with a garrote. All of those injuries had healed completely. That meant that the attempts on her life hadn't started when she was identified as a pilot, but nearly a year previous. This was about the same time as she would have been given the initial testing from the Marduk Institute.

Ritsuko was privy to more of the secrets of NERV and SEELE than most. She knew that whenever a child with strong pilot potential was identified, SEELE would quietly arrange for the parents of the child to get a job offer in Tokyo-3. This strategy both put them in a position where they could be watched in case some organization tried to target them, and made recruiting them in the event that any of them were conclusively identified as a Child simpler. Over ninety percent of the world's potential pilots were living in Tokyo-3, most of them attending the same school that all the pilots were in. With the potential pilots being casually watched, and the actual pilots under active Section 2 protection the moment they were identified (With the exception of Shinji, who was still quietly watched in the time between his identification and actual recruitment), none of the pilots or potential pilots were easy targets. Except for Kirika Yumura, the one girl whose parents weren't contactable at the time of the initial identification. And from a casual glance, it appeared that she had been forced to deal with at least four murder attempts in the past year. Was somebody trying to kill off pilot candidates before they could become actual pilots? Was somebody in the Marduk Institute passing information to the killers before safety precautions could be taken?

Ritsuko resolved to bring that possibility up with the Commander later on. She finished collecting basic measurements, saved the data, and then set the analysis programs to start working on the blood sample she'd taken. The program had barely been running for five minutes when the power abruptly went out.

* * *

Gendo Ikari considered the new pilot and her guardian. Normally he wouldn't have bothered to meet with the new pilot unless he had something of substance to discuss with them. But his superiors in Les Soldats had instructed him to keep them informed of the Fourth's activities, as well as those of her guardian. As such, he decided that it was important to meet them in person and attempt to get their measure.

His first impression of the two was that they were dangerous. The reported body count from the attempt on their lives the month before had implied this, but there was no way to tell from that report who had been responsible for all the bodies. It could have been one person doing all the fighting and the other just running. Watching the way they moved, it was apparent that both of them had been fighting in that battle. From that, he concluded that the Fourth was somebody that Les Soldats considered to be either a threat or a potential recruit. And it would be his reports that would help his superiors decide which of those options they would decide on.

As he noted this, he also considered the possibility of recruiting the girl for either SEELE or simply himself. Anyone skilled enough to be worthy of consideration for recruitment as an agent for one side in this scenario was worthy of similar consideration by the others, after all. And somebody who Les Soldats considered a potential threat might be a useful tool to have on hand if they discovered that his scenario did not coincide with whatever scenario they had planned. Strange, though… for some reason the Fourth Child looked familiar to him…

As he was trying to figure out why that was the case, the power went out.

* * *

While Dr Akagi and Commander Ikari were both considering the Fourth Child, a technician named Masahiro Ishikawa was doing inventory work in one of the secure storage facilities deep in Central Dogma. He was checking the objects in the various storage bins against what was supposed to be there, which could have been done by Section 2, but Commander Ikari wanted a degree of assurance that the items in the bins were actually what the tags claimed them to be. Any untrained person could check to see if something was missing, but in order to verify that an item hadn't been replaced with a facsimile, you needed the skills of someone who something about the objects being examined. As such, the inventory was done by technicians, who were watched by Section 2 agents to make sure that the technicians didn't try to steal anything.

Even with the extra responsibility of examining the stored items for replacement, inventory was a mind-numbing task. Go to a bin, check what's in it, check what's supposed to be in it, make sure the two lists match, go to the next bin and repeat. He went through that procedure over and over for several hours, until he reached bin A2-243-501. Looking into it, he saw that it contained a small container that had been carefully sealed. Checking the inventory file, he saw that the bin was supposed to be empty.

Thinking that somebody must have misfiled it, he opened the bin and examined the container. The container was a Bakelite freeze unit mean for storing items in cryogenic suspension. A quick check revealed that every item that was supposed to be stored in deep freeze was supposed to have been filed in a bin he had already examined – and had been exactly where they should have been. Whatever was in the container, it was not supposed to be here. Taking out a portable scanning device, he examined the frozen contents. What he found shocked him. For this unexplained container held a piece of an Angel. A piece that was still alive.

Masahiro was an extremely minor agent of Les Soldats. Just this morning he had received instructions from his controller that he was to try to see if there was a way to appropriate some Angel tissue, and now a sample that wasn't accounted for anywhere was right in front of him. The presence of the unexplained Angel sample did have some disturbing implications, however. Did this mean that somebody else was trying to achieve the same goal that Les Soldats was?

Suddenly, the power cut out. All lights in the storeroom went off. Taking advantage of the opportunity, Masahiro hid the container in an inside pocket of his lab coat. He would send off the sample and a report on how he came by it after his shift. Nobody could have seen him take it in the darkness, and how does one investigate the disappearance of something that couldn't be proven to have been there in the first place?

* * *

At the same time that Ritsuko started her examination of Kirika, the first three Children were getting out of school. They had been told that the Fourth Child had arrived and that they were to report in. If an accident occurred while the Fourth underwent her first sync test, things would be easier to resolve if there was another Evangelion on hand to deal with the problem.

What little conversation there was between the three pilots concerned the newest pilot. All that they had been told about the Fourth for certain was that the Fourth was a she and was apparently from France. It took less than a minute for the three to realize that they weren't able to infer any additional information about her. The rest of the trip continued in silence.

Upon reaching the entrance to the GeoFront, they encountered a problem. The door locks were all broken. Attempting to phone in revealed that all the cell towers were down. Turning to look back at the city, they realized that all the lights had gone out. The entire city power grid had gone down for some reason.

While Shinji and Asuka were wondering what they should do, Rei pulled a regulation manual out of her pocket. Consulting it, she announced that in a situation like this, they were to make their way into headquarters. She then walked away from the main entrance and approached a ventilation duct. The other two pilots helped her remove the grille, and then they entered the shaft.

* * *

Gendo entered the bridge.

"What's going on?" He demanded.

"Something's wrong with the city's generator. Ninety eight percent of the output circuits have gone offline. We've been able to get in contact with engineering, but only by sending runners down to pass messages manually. They're trying to get the power grid back online, but they're not certain how long it will take." Replied a technician.

"Concentrate on keeping Terminal Dogma online and restoring the rest of the power grid. All other considerations are secondary."

"But Sir! That will mean cutting power to life support!"

"Do it!"

Just then, a runner came in the bridge. "Sir, we've just gotten a report from the surface. There's an Angel approaching the city!"

Gendo growled in irritation. The timing was terrible. An attack was coming just as they were least able to do anything about it. He turned to the runner. "Get to Dr Akagi's office and tell her to get the Fourth Child to the EVA hangers immediately. I'll have them start launch preparations myself."

Then the commander and the runner were both out of the bridge, desperately running towards their destinations in the hope that things would be ready in time.

* * *

It took a great deal of physical effort, but the crews were able to get the Evangelions ready to accept entry plugs and loaded with extra battery cells. Pallet rifles had been dragged from storage to a point where they could be easily reached by the pilots upon launch. NERV was ready for battle, save for one point. All they had for pilots was one untried girl. The other pilots were not to be found.

There was a loud noise from the ceiling. The noise repeated several times. People looked up. A section of ventilation piping that had been struck by a swinging battery pack while the crews were trying to winch it into place was groaning. Apparently something with significant mass was inside of it, placing additional strain on the weakened shaft. With a groan, the section of piping broke open, dropping three people into the hanger.

Gendo faced the newly arrived pilots. "Suit up. An Angel has been spotted approaching the city. I want the Evangelions deployed as soon as possible."

The two girls nodded their understanding. Shinji did not. He had been on the bottom of the group that had fallen, and had struck his head when landing. Ritsuko gave him a brief examination. He was alive, but unconscious. Attempts to revive him failed, so she and a member of the work crew picked him up and carried him to a spot where he wouldn't be underfoot.

Gendo noted the situation, then stated. "Since the Third Child is incapacitated, the Fourth Child shall pilot Unit One in his place. Pilots, get to your Evangelions."

Asuka started towards the lockers, then paused. "Wait a minute. Aren't the Evangelions all set up to take commands in Japanese? The only one set up for multiple languages is mine, and it isn't programmed to understand French!"

A voice Asuka had never heard before replied in perfect Japanese. "That won't be a problem."

Standing outside the girl's locker was somebody that Asuka had never seen before. She was about Rei's height, and had A-10 connectors in her hair. Beyond that, she couldn't really tell in the dim emergency lighting. This was the Fourth Child.

"Pilots, prepare to launch." Gendo repeated. Asuka ran to the locker room to suit up.

* * *

Kirika watched as the entry plug filled itself with LCL. After a few minutes, the plug was completely flooded. It took a time for her to adjust; the liquid smelled like blood to her experienced nose, and while she had seen and smelt blood plenty of times, she had never been obliged to breathe it before. But after a few breaths, her lungs adapted to being filled with liquid instead of air.

As Kirika gripped the controls, she felt something strange. It seemed almost like someone was watching her. As she looked around the entry plug, the sensation changed. It almost felt like some invisible person had recognized her and was welcoming her. Then the sensation faded away, and EVA-01 powered up.

A voice with a German accent came in over the com system. "Are you up, Fourth Child? Let's get moving."

Glad that she had been given the opportunity to study the operation manual for the Evangelion on her flight to Japan, she had her unit follow behind the other two as they crawled through the launch tunnels.

Controlling the Evangelion was difficult. It moved the way she expected it to, but it felt sluggish, like she was moving around with her muscles half-asleep. As somebody whose survival often depended on quick reflexes, this was troubling to her. She'd have to find some way to correct that if she wanted to fight to her full capabilities.

The three units crawled their way through the launch tunnels until they reached the point where the Angel was located. The Ninth Angel was at the top of a vertical launch tube, dripping odd sludge down the shaft. As Unit 2 leaned out, looking up, the red Evangelion got hit by some of it. The unit then quickly retreated, a curse coming in over the com. The sludge was apparently quite acidic.

Kirika thought about the nature of the attack. If the Angel was letting the acid leave its body to drop down the shaft, then the acid was exiting the AT field. That implied that the AT field might be weak or absent at the point it was dropped from at the instant it dropped. Calling up sensor data, she figured out the depth of the shaft and started timing the period between acid drops.

The German voice came in again. "Alright, what are our options…"

"Quiet." Kirika interrupted.

"What are you…"

"I cannot aim my shot accurately if you provide extra background noise. Please be quiet."

Kirika slowly stretched her Evangelion's arm out into the shaft, rifle pointed upwards. Then she concentrated on the sound of the falling acid. Using that to determine the point where the acid was coming from, she carefully aligned the rifle. Then she waited a moment, and fired a three round burst upwards.

Her shots flew towards the Angel impacting at its center point just as it was about to release more acid. The bullets penetrated it's weakened AT field. The first shot was dissolved in the forming Angel Tear but the other two pierced into the Angels body causing it to collapse lifelessly.

There was a pause as the other pilots realized what had just happened. Kirika had just landed a lethal shot on their opponent while aiming by ear alone. Her EVA wasn't even looking into the shaft at the time she fired, let alone up it. Finally, the German voice quietly said "Nice shot."

"Thank you." Kirika replied.

"Let's get to the surface. It will probably be a while before they can send a team to retrieve our EVAs, and I'd rather wait outside than down in these shafts."

"Agreed."

* * *

Three Evangelions were perched on a hillside overlooking Tokyo-3. Their entry plugs had been ejected, and their pilots were climbing out. As Asuka finished purging the LCL from her lungs, she turned and got a good look at the new pilot. And froze. She blinked, then looked again. Finally, she said "Gute Güte! Bist du und Wundermädchen verwandt? (Good Grief! Are you and Wondergirl related?)"

The new pilot looked at Rei. Apart from the other girl's albinism, they could have passed for sisters. The resemblance was made more obvious by the fact that they were wearing identical plug suits. She replied "Nicht daß ich bewußt bin (Not that I'm aware of.)."

Asuka wasn't expecting the Fourth to be fluent in German. Switching to Japanese for the benefit of Rei, she said "I'm Asuka Langley Soryu," offering her hand.

"Kirika Yumura." The other replied, taking it.

The third girl approached and also introduced herself. "Rei Ayanami."

Asuka looked at the new pilot. "You don't look like you're from France. Were your parents immigrants?"

"I'm not French. I was just living there when I was recruited."

Apparently the new pilot was nearly as uncommunicative as Rei. But there was something different about the short manner in which Kirika replied. With Rei there was a sense that she couldn't be bothered with unnecessary speech. With Kirika it felt more like she wanted to be friends, but was forcing herself not to. As if she both wanted to and feared to take that step forward. Asuka wasn't sure what to make of that.

The three stayed on the hillside, watching the scenery. After a while, the lights in the cityscape came back on. Shortly after that, a team arrived to transport the Evangelions back into the GeoFront.

* * *

With the power back on, Ritsuko restarted all the analysis programs that had been aborted by the sudden blackout. Most of the results of the physical she had saved before the power went out, but the analysis had just barely started when that had happened. Rapidly clicking boxes as to which tests to run, she started up the program and then left the office to get some coffee.

Returning after the coffee break ended up taking longer than she expected. The Commander had called her and asked her to get a team gathered to start the initial examination of the dead Angel. By the time she returned to her office, nearly an hour had passed. Ritsuko was surprised to see that the analysis had just finished when she got in.

Taking the results of the tests, she quickly realized that the reason it had taken so long was because she had accidentally clicked the box calling for a full DNA analysis along with all the tests she was supposed to have been running. She would have shrugged it off, but then she saw the results of the test.

"It couldn't be…" She whispered to herself. "It just couldn't be…"

But the results didn't lie, and the MAGI estimated only a .00000057 percent chance of error. Ritsuko picked up a phone and made a call to Misato to have her bring the Fourth Child to her office. Then she made a second call to have a medic send Shinji over as well.

* * *

Shinji woke up to the semi-familiar ceiling of the NERV medical wing. After being given a quick checkup by a nurse, he was told that he'd be fine, given some aspirin to deal with the headache, and told that Dr Akagi wanted to see him for something.

As Shinji made his way to Akagi's office, he overheard talk in the hallways about the battle that had occurred while he was out cold. Apparently the newest pilot had taken it down rather easily. That was a relief. He mentally kicked himself for not being able to join in the fight. He couldn't protect his sister if he was unconscious in the…

As he entered Dr Akagi's office, he froze. The girl next to Misato, she looked like… No, she didn't just look like, she was! It was her, somehow, deep down, he knew it. It was her! She was here!

"Ki… Kirika?" He whispered.

The girl he knew had to be his sister turned and looked at him. "Yes?" She asked.

Dr Akagi got up, a sheaf of printouts in her hand. She looked at Kirika and said, "Shinji, this is Kirika, the Fourth Child. Kirika, this is Shinji, the Third. I believe that he's been looking for you for some time Ms Yumura. Or should I call you Ms _Ikari_?"

With that, she laid the printouts onto a table. The top page read:

**DNA Analysis Complete…**

**Subject: Yumura, Kirika**

**Immediate Genetic Ancestry: Ikari, Gendo; Ikari, Yui**

Kirika looked down at the papers. But before she could make any reply, Shinji joyfully cried out " _Imouto-chan!_ " and glomped his sister.

* * *

A/N: One thing that generally isn't mentioned about animal cloning as it exists now is that it takes a lot of tries to get one viable clone, and they tend to develop a lot of health problems and die young. Dolly the Sheep was the only test subject out of twenty-nine to make it to term and not die in infancy. She died at six, roughly half the life expectancy of a normal sheep. Cloning cattle has only a .8 percent chance of succeeding, and a third of them die young. I doubt a cloned human would do any better at the moment. There must be some reason why Rei isn't chronically ill, and being part Angel seems a viable explanation.

Gendo is a man who enjoys controlling others. But at the same time, he works for an organization that expects absolute obedience on pain of death. That isn't a good combination for someone who isn't at the top.

Kirika's aim really is that good. In episode 3, when trapped in a casino with all the lights taken out, Kirika defeats a group of men with night vision goggles by breaking into the popcorn machine, scattering kernels around the floor, and aiming perfect kill shots from the sound of people walking across them.

The only resemblance between Kirika and Rei that I know of is a superficial degree of similarity in hairstyle. Due to the fact that they are arguably half siblings in this story, I'm invoking literary license.

Does Kirika speak German? Quite possibly. She is supposed to be fluent in several languages, which are never named. If one assumes that she can speak the language of every country she travels to in the anime, then she knows, at a minimum, Japanese, French, English, Italian, Russian, German, Chinese and possibly Spanish.

A lot of people are about to make a lot of highly inaccurate conclusions. But the important thing to note is that these conclusions are sensible from the perspective of the people making them and what they know at the time.


	8. An Unusual Reunion

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion.

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 8

An Unusual Reunion

Upon returning to the GeoFront, Kirika was introduced to Misato Katsuragi, her immediate superior (Who had apparently spent the entire battle trapped in an elevator). Things had barely gotten beyond introductions when the Captain received a phone call from Dr Akagi. After the call, Misato took her back to the Doctor's office.

Kirika wasn't sure why she had been brought back to the office. Her uncertainty was reinforced when Dr Akagi told her to sit down and wait. Two minutes later, someone else entered the office. Kirika recognized him as the boy who got knocked out shortly before she was sent to fight the Angel. The moment he saw her, he froze, staring at her.

"Ki… Kirika?" He whispered.

Kirika turned and replied "Yes?" She wondered how he knew her.

Dr Akagi got up, a sheaf of printouts in her hand. She looked at Kirika and said, "Shinji, this is Kirika, the Fourth Child. Kirika, this is Shinji, the Third. I believe that he's been looking for you for some time Ms Yumura. Or should I call you Ms Ikari?"

Kirika was confused. Why would the Doctor be addressing her as Ikari? Before she could ask about this, Akagi laid the papers on the table. The top page read:

DNA Analysis Complete…

Subject: Yumura, Kirika

Immediate Genetic Ancestry: Ikari, Gendo; Ikari, Yui

Kirika looked down at the first real clue of who she was before Altena decided to take control of her life. Moments later, Shinji cried out "Imouto-chan!" and glomped her.

Shinji clung to his sister, tears of joy in his eyes. She was back. Where she had been all this time and what she had been doing didn't matter at this moment. All that mattered was that she was here. For the first time in ten long years, they were together again. His sister was home, and all was right with the world.

The next four words to come out of Kirika's mouth would shatter his dreams again, just at the moment when they were coming true.

* * *

 

The moment she found herself in the boy's embrace, Kirika realized that she had found answers to two of the questions that had bothered her for months. She did have a family. And at least one member of her family had missed her, and was willing to welcome her back.

As the boy who was apparently her brother clung to her, Kirika wondered how he would react if he knew what she had become. Could he love a sister whose hands were stained with blood? Or would he reject her if he ever learned of the numerous deaths that she had caused?

Thinking about the implications of her previous occupation brought Kirika to a chilling realization. She had enemies, and her enemies would not hesitate to kill family and friends to get to her. Milosh's murder was proof enough of that. Even though the parties responsible for that specific act were dead, there were still others with grievances with Noir, the most notable being Les Soldats, who knew exactly who she was.

As she thought of Les Soldats, she remembered something else. The one thing she knew about her family was that one or both of her parents had given her to Altena. And if her parents had been Soldats, then there was a good chance that their son was being groomed to be a Soldat as well. And the average Soldat would betray their kin for the sake of the organization without hesitation, no matter how close they were. Mireille's uncle standing aside and allowing her to kill the Bouquets without making the slightest effort to stop their execution from happening was a clear example of this.

If Shinji was being trained to follow in his family's footsteps in Les Soldats, then there was too great a risk that he'd betray her to them. And the name listed on the document as her father – that was the Commander. There was a minimum fifty-fifty chance that he was a Soldat. That meant that there was a good chance that NERV was Soldat-controlled. Which meant that she and Mireille had been herded into a trap.

Kirika remembered the haunting loneliness she had felt when she woke up in that apartment a year before with absolutely no idea of who she was. That feeling had only really ended when she teamed up with Mireille. When Mireille had broken off their partnership after that revelation on the rooftops of Paris, the pain of having that feeling return nearly destroyed her. Kirika didn't want to feel that way ever again.

Kirika desperately wanted to lift her arms and return the embrace. To accept the family that had suddenly been offered to her. To have one more shield against the terrible sensation of being totally cut off from the rest of the world. But the tempting gift that was held out to her held too many risks, to herself and to Mireille. What Kirika knew she had to do was going to be one of the hardest things she had ever done.

* * *

 

When Ritsuko and Misato saw Shinji glomp Kirika, they both heaved a sigh of relief. With Shinji's sister as the extra pilot, they had both the means to ensure that he wouldn't suffer another breakdown and a replacement pilot in the event that somebody was injured. At least that was what they thought until the moment that Kirika spoke.

"Do I know you?"

The two women watched as the Fourth Child freed herself from the Third's embrace and step away from him. They exchanged a look that clearly expressed the thought in both of their minds.

Oh, shit.

"D… don't you remember me, imouto?" Shinji protested. "It's me, Shinji! Your aniki!"

"I… have a brother?"

Shinji stiffened. Kirika stood up and headed for the door. Ritsuko made as if to stop her.

"Ms Ikari…" She called.

"My name is Yumura. The first time I'd ever heard the name Ikari in my life was when I was first approached for this job. If there's nothing else, I need to get to my apartment and start unpacking."

With that, Kirika left. The moment the door closed, Shinji fell to his knees and started sobbing. His one goal in life had been stolen from him just as it was in his grasp for the second time, and it wasn't certain if he could recover from that loss again.

* * *

 

Mireille found Kirika and the two headed to the apartment they had been assigned. They spent the next hour carefully checking to see if the place had been bugged. After determining that they weren't bugged and that their belongings hadn't been tampered with, the two started unpacking. While they did, they started discussing what they had learned.

"My duties while here are to act as your bodyguard when you aren't at school or NERV. There are two other pilots staying in the apartment across the hall, and I'll be watching them as well when circumstances allow. Given that you and the other pilots will be spending hours at a stretch in either location, it looks like I'll have more mobility than you will." Mireille said.

"I've met the rest of the pilots. And I think we have a problem." Kirika added.

"Oh?" Mireille raised an eyebrow.

"It seems that of the pilots, Shinji Ikari, is… my brother."

"What!"

"For some reason, the physical they had me take involved a full DNA analysis. It seems that my birth name was Kirika Ikari."

For a moment, Mireille was happy for her partner. A mystery about her that they had thought unsolvable had just been solved. Then she noticed the last name. "Wait a minute. Ikari as in Gendo Ikari?"

"Yes. It seems that the Commander is my father. Which means that there's a good chance that Les Soldats controls NERV."

Mireille winced. She hadn't even thought about them. This only made the other thing she had learned that day more troubling. "They might control more than just NERV. Look at this." She handed over the printout she had found in city hall. "This is a list of instructions that were sent to a councilman on how to vote in a meeting that took place today. These instructions covered just about everything that was brought up in today's meeting. But that's not what's disturbing.

"What's disturbing is the fact that every single issue mentioned in the email was resolved in the manner that the email discussed. The person I got this from didn't always start out on the side of the issue he was instructed to, and he actually voted against that side once or twice, but it never mattered. Every single vote ended up being in favor of the resolution given in the email, by at least a seventy percent majority. Usually the vote was closer to ninety percent. The only way this could happen is if virtually the entire council was getting instructions like these, and the entire session was an act to convince outsiders that the decisions were the result of political compromise instead of the decrees of this MAGI, whoever he is. If Les Soldats controls NERV, then those emails are being sent by one of their agents. They control the entire city."

"Then we've walked right into a trap."

"Quite likely. But I don't know how we can get out of it. Thanks to the French media, an entire country knows what we look like, and that will undoubtedly spread to the rest of the world. If we try to run, the whole world will know about it. Nobody will be willing to side with two people who abandoned all of humanity. The only way out is forward."

"So what do we do?"

"If we want to make it out of this, we need to figure out who the Soldats in NERV are and what they're up to. We need more information if we're going to escape whatever plan they have. I don't suppose that Altena ever mentioned anything about this place to you before your memory loss?"

"No, she never discussed her plans unless Chloe and I were to be a part of them. And even then, all she ever told us is what we needed to do to help them along."

"And she might not have been running this operation in the first place. Pity. For now, we'll just have to keep our eyes open and try to identify who in NERV is a Soldat and who is just following orders. I'll try to dig around and see what else I can find."

Without further information, there wasn't much more they could decide on at that time. The two finished unpacking, ate some takeout that they had picked up after leaving the base, and went to bed.

* * *

 

Shinji didn't really notice Misato leading him back to her car. He didn't notice being driven back to her apartment. He didn't notice being led back to his room. It didn't matter. Nothing mattered anymore. Kirika had forgotten him.

For ten years he had waited for a chance to be with her again. And when it looked like he might finally be reunited with her, she had vanished. For months he had fought the Angels so that she would be safe from the threat they presented from the world, hoping that he might somehow find her. But when she was finally found, he was a total stranger to her. She didn't recognize her brother. She didn't remember even having a brother. He had been waiting for her return for years, and she had moved on, leaving him behind.

There was a picture next to his bed. Shinji picked it up and stared at it. The picture showed him and Kirika sitting together. It had been taken by their mother shortly before she died. Once it was a fond memory of a happier time. Now it was just a mocking reminder of a dream that could never come true. Shinji threw the picture at the wall and cried himself to sleep.

* * *

 

Masahiro Ishikawa left the GeoFront, heading for home. His theft of the Angel specimen had gone completely unnoticed. While taking the subway, he pulled out a cell phone and placed a call. After exchanging a few seemingly innocuous comments with the person on the other end of the line, he changed clothes at his apartment and headed out again.

Masahiro headed to a bar five blocks away from his home, dressed as an ordinary businessman carrying a plain briefcase. He headed to the bar and ordered a drink. As he wasn't a regular in the bar, nobody recognized him. The other patrons assumed that he was just another worker enjoying a drink after work, those that noticed him at all.

Thirty minutes and two drinks later, a second businessman entered the bar, carrying an identical briefcase. He sat next to Masahiro and ordered a drink. Ten minutes later Masahiro paid his tab, picked up a briefcase, and left. Twenty minutes after that, the other man did the same.

Had anyone been paying close attention to them, they might have noticed that the two businessmen had picked up the wrong briefcases. Even if they had, they would have assumed it was a simple confusion brought about by drink and the fact that the two briefcases were extremely similar. But the exchange hadn't been an accident.

Masahiro returned home with an empty briefcase, pleased with the fact that he had completed his assignment in under a day. The second man carried away the briefcase containing a frozen Angel, beginning a chain of exchanges that would take it to a Soldat lab in France.

* * *

 

Kirika and Mireille had just started reheating the remains of the previous night's dinner for breakfast when they heard a loud yell. The yell was coming from the apartment across the hallway, the one occupied by two of the other pilots, whose security was their responsibility. Quickly grabbing their pistols, they rushed out of their apartment, kicked open the door of the other apartment, and charged in, weapons at the ready.

Whatever caused the shout, it wasn't an act of violence. All that was in the main room was Misato and Asuka. Misato was holding a half-crumpled beer can. Both residents of the apartment had a shocked expression on their faces over the sudden intrusion.

"WHAT THE HECK IS GOING ON?" Asuka yelled.

"What was that shouting about few moments ago?" Mireille inquired.

Asuka snorted. "You think that Misato's morning beer cheer meant we were under attack? Dummkopfs…" Asuka walked away, muttering under her breath in German about the Fourth Child being hopelessly paranoid.

"I'm sorry about that, it's just that it isn't normal to hear people yelling like that at six in the morning…"

"After what happened at your last home, I can understand your reaction," Misato replied. "Just don't do it again. You must be Mireille Bouquet. I'm Captain Misato Katsuragi, head of the Tactical Division. The girl who just left was Asuka Soryu, pilot of EVA-02."

Mireille and Misato shook hands. At this point, Kirika spoke up.

"Weren't there supposed to be two pilots staying here?"

"Oh, yes, your bro… uh, Shinji. He wasn't feeling very good last night. He's probably still in bed."

A moan came from the back of the apartment. The three women headed towards the sound of the noise. It came from a bedroom with a partially open door. Misato looked in, then gasped. The other two headed in, and understood why Misato was so surprised.

Shinji wasn't sick per se. He was sitting in his bed, with his head in his hands, completely oblivious to the world around him. He paid no attention to the fact that the light had just turned on, that there were three other people in the room, or that a penguin had apparently been pecking him in the leg for several minutes, judging by all the reddish marks on it.

Realizing that her responsibilities as bodyguard included the need to keep the boy from being slowly pecked to death by the unexplained bird, Mireille headed across the room and separated the two. As she carried the penguin away, Kirika noticed something that had been discarded on the floor.

It was a picture frame. The frame was worn, showing signs that it had been frequently but carefully handled for years. There was also a dent on one side, which looked like it was from a recent collision. A slight scuff on the wall showed what the collision was with. As a result of that impact, the glass on the front of the frame was cracked.

The picture showed two children sitting together. One of the two looked like a young Shinji. The other… was her. A four-year old her, holding onto the young Shinji with a degree of casual familiarity that she would never consider doing with anyone other than Mireille, and showing an innocent smile that before that moment Kirika would sworn she had never shown anyone, ever.

It was one thing to learn that she'd had a life before Altena. It was another thing entirely to see who she was before Altena. The person she had been before the trials had been a cold, merciless killer, who even at the tender age of five was willing to commit murder and not feel a shred of regret until the matter came up again nine years later. Kirika could recall feeling satisfaction at achieving a goal or completing a task, but she couldn't remember ever feeling happy. Not because she was unhappy, but because seeking happiness seemed to be unimportant. Her more recent life had also been short of innocent, carefree, fun. The only thing that really qualified was one week of painting with Milosh, which came to an abrupt and tragic end. The photograph showed her a life where she could enjoy life purely for the sake of living it, where all she needed to be happy was her family. A life that was destroyed by Altena and her plans for Le Grand Retour. A life that someone in her family knowingly helped Altena destroy.

Shinji finally noticed that he wasn't alone in the room. He looked up and stared at Kirika. He got to his feet and started shakily walking towards her.

"I-Imouto?" He whispered, "Don't you remember me?"

He grabbed her by the shoulders. "Why?" he sobbed, "Why don't you remember me? Why don't you remember your aniki?" He buried his head in her shoulder and tried to cry, but no tears would come. He remained there until Misato pried him off of her and led him back to his bed.

It was quickly agreed that Misato would take Kirika to headquarters for training, while Mireille and Asuka would remain behind and make sure that Shinji didn't injure himself. As Kirika headed back to her apartment, discarded photograph absently tucked under one arm; she recalled the expression on Shinji's face and realized that she'd never seen such a look of absolute despair in her entire life.

But she had a feeling that had there been a mirror in that graveyard in Paris a month before, she'd have seen one in her own reflection.

* * *

 

The enormous purple form of EVA-01 walked down the street. Its opponent, a flying purple squid-like creature, floated towards it. The Angel lashed out with one of its tentacles, striking at the Evangelion's feet. EVA-01 leapt backwards, the pistol in one hand drawing a bead on its target while it somersaulted away. The first two shots were early, passing under the Angel. Before a third could be fired, the second tentacle grabbed onto one of the EVA's feet. Cracking the tentacle like a whip, the Angel smashed the Evangelion into the ground, and then started slicing it apart.

Misato stopped the recording of the simulated battle. Running a secondary calculation, the MAGI estimated that not only had the backflip that Kirika attempted not had sufficient linear velocity to get clear of the attack, it also lacked sufficient rotational velocity to complete the flip. Had the Angel not grabbed her, she would have landed on her head.

It wasn't that Kirika was a bad fighter. If anything, she was too good. At some point in the ten years she had been missing, Kirika had obviously become an extremely talented fighter. Her marksmanship exceeded Shinji's to a point that Misato hadn't known was possible. She knew at an instinctive level precisely how much time and energy she needed to perform any action she wanted to do. When Section 2 sent an unarmed combat instructor to evaluate her skills, she'd taken him down in seconds. The man was in the medical wing, being treated for a concussion and a broken collarbone from when the girl leapt over his head and thrown him into a wall. Misato didn't doubt that Kirika could have pulled off that backwards somersault while shooting move while on foot.

However, that degree of expertise was more of a hindrance than help when channeled through an Evangelion at a sync ratio of 29.3 percent. The low sync ratio resulted in delays between commands sent and the actual actions, and improperly interpreted levels of response. This wasn't much of a problem at extreme long ranges; when sniping the only thing that mattered was one finger, and maintaining proper timing of one small part was doable. But at mid to close ranges, Kirika was forced to maneuver and aim at the same time, which resulted in signal confusion, which translated to stumbles and misses. In melee combat, the situation was even worse. She seemed to expect the Evangelion to move the same way she did, which wasn't possible at that sync ratio.

Every time Kirika engaged in close combat, she would reflexively use a move that required precise timing to work, which would take her a specific distance over a precise amount of time. But the low sync ratio would inevitably cause the timing to be off, the maneuver to use the incorrect amount of force, or both. This hadn't been a problem with Shinji; he'd learned the basics at the same time as he learned to pilot, so his style depended on simpler moves that didn't require that much precision. But Kirika subconsciously expected that the Evangelion be able to perform at the same level she did, something that she couldn't make it do.

It wasn't that she couldn't perform the simple moves that Shinji used. It was that when an actual fight happened, she tended to forget to force herself to use simper techniques instead of the advanced moves. And until she improved her sync ratio by about fifty points, she wouldn't be able to pull them off. If an Angel ever showed up that was small enough to be engaged on foot, Misato could probably send Kirika after it and be assured of victory. But until that unlikely event happened, the Fourth Child would be relegated to long-range fire support. She'd probably be quite capable with the new type 20 positron cannons, but for now she was useless when fighting closer in.

It was a shame that Kirika didn't appear to be suitable for the mid-range role that Shinji was using. Misato would have to think of a new way to have the pilots work together using Kirika instead of Shinji. Fortunately, there were no known issues with the Fourth Child working with either the First or the Second, even if their strange reunion of the previous day showed that there were definite issues concerning the Third. After seeing the state he was in that morning, Misato wasn't sure when, or if, he'd recover enough to pilot again. After a moment, Misato smirked, remembering what she had learned when she called home to see how he was doing. At least Asuka had found an effective way of making sure he didn't withdraw from the world again, unorthodox as it was…

* * *

 

Asuka watched Misato drive away from the balcony. Inside, Mireille was watching to make sure that nobody came in while she waited for the repair crew to arrive and fix the door frame she had ruined.

Asuka still couldn't believe that the new pilot and her guardian kicked the door open and stormed the apartment because of Misato's morning wake-up routine. And that woman was going to be part of her security detail now. That was just great. The normal people assigned by Section 2 were fairly discreet. Having a trigger-happy paranoid watching her didn't seem very appealing.

And the Fourth Child joined in that idiocy! What kind of bodyguard takes someone she's supposed to be protecting into a perceived threat zone? It seemed that the newest pilot was just as crazy as her guardian. Asuka couldn't believe that she turned out to be the Third's missing sister.

Asuka turned her thoughts to the Third Child. The boy was still in his room, wallowing in self-pity. Pathetic. She hadn't heard from her cousin in nearly as long as he'd been separated from his sister, and she was still able to function. But when the Third's family reunion turned out to not get a fairy-tale ending, he promptly fell apart. Asuka decided to give him a piece of her mind.

Pen-Pen was pecking Shinji in the leg again. Asuka sighed, and then went to the kitchen. Hearing the sound of a can of fish getting emptied into his food dish, the bird warked happily and waddled off to eat his breakfast. Having removed the penguin, Asuka returned to Shinji's room.

Asuka looked down on the disturbingly passive boy with contempt. "So here's the great Third Child," she snorted with scorn. "A boy who faced down four Angels doesn't have the stomach to handle a little personal rejection. I can't believe that they decided to make someone that spineless a pilot. Who in their right mind would trust the safety of the world to someone so caught up in their own problems that he doesn't even notice that the rest of the world exists?"

Shinji didn't respond. He just continued staring blankly at the wall. Asuka growled under breath. This was the boy who thought to challenge her on the Over the Rainbow? Thinking back on that day, an idea came to her. This ought to get a reaction out of him…

Asuka slapped him. The blow took him on the cheek, and knocked him onto the floor. Asuka stalked up to him, and started kicking him. Her foot connected with his leg, right on the spot where Pen-Pen had been pecking him for over an hour. Shinji grunted as he was hit in an already injured spot, and Asuka took advantage of the fact that Shinji was responding to outside stimuli to chew him out some more.

"You think you're the only person in the world with family problems, Third Child? I haven't seen or heard from my cousin in ten years. Do you see me wallowing in self-pity because she never remembers to write? No! I have a job to do, and the fact that she's forgotten about her family won't make that go away. So get on your gottfluch feet and get back to work!"

With that, she grabbed Shinji by the scruff of the neck and hauled him into an upright position. Pinning him against the wall, she pulled back her fist. But the blow never landed. Some combination of her words and blows had awakened Shinji's self-preservation instincts, and he blocked the punch. Asuka smiled, released her grip, and then proceeded to pound him into the floor.

After she knocked him out of his room, Mireille noticed the commotion and intervened. After Asuka and Mireille briefly discussed what was going on, Shinji's wake-up call resumed. Asuka spent the rest of the day drilling Shinji ruthlessly in hand-to-hand combinations. Whenever he started drifting off, Asuka would beat him into the floor again. Mireille supervised, correcting their form when necessary, and making sure that Asuka never inflicted any damage more severe than bruising.

By the time Misato and Kirika returned, Shinji was heavily battered and totally exhausted. He crawled back to his bed and collapsed. He didn't even notice his sister's arrival. He hadn't recovered from his upset – far from it. But Asuka had managed to get him to stop dwelling on it for a time, if only by making him more interested in not getting beaten up.

* * *

 

Gendo considered the information that Dr Akagi had brought him concerning the Fourth Child. The girl that he had given up to Les Soldats ten years before and the girl that they wanted him to observe were one and the same. His daughter had reentered the scenario without warning and he didn't know how he should move her to advance his plans. After ten years without any information he didn't know enough about her to be able to manipulate her at will.

Using access to her to control the Third was not possible. The arrangements to have the Fourth live in the same complex and attend the same school as the Third had already been made and enacted. And as the arrangements had ostensibly been made to increase security over the Children, he couldn't alter them without inviting unwelcome questions. Using family connections to control her was also impossible. Dr Akagi stated that the girl was unaware of her original family name at the time that it was revealed, and showed no interest in being reacquainted with her kin.

Apparently, the Third's mental problems had resurfaced upon the revelation that his sister no longer remembered him. That was potentially harmful to the scenario, but not nearly as much as it could have been. While having as many usable pilots available as possible was the optimum for the current phase of the scenario, all that was really needed was one person capable of piloting each available Evangelion. The Fourth had proven capable of piloting Unit 01, and was able to defeat an Angel on her first sortie with considerably more ease than the Third had. If the Third recovered, then there would be two pilots available for EVA-01. If he did not, then NERV could keep the functional pilot and discard the broken one.

Far more troubling was the fact that Les Soldats wanted the Fourth watched. She had been taken into the organization by one of its most senior members. Presumably she was a Soldat herself. Why did Les Soldats want someone to spy on one of their own?

Was this a warning, a message to him from one faction that another faction was plotting against him? Or a threat, a message that they suspected that he was playing his own game and would be eliminated if he stepped too far out of line? Or was this for some other reason entirely? For now, the only way to find out was to follow his instructions and hope that later information would help him discover the answer.

Now, how to get that information. Some of it would be available through routine reports filed by Section 2, but the Fourth's primary watcher was her guardian, who she had recruited to Section 2 personally. Mireille Bouquet would undoubtedly be more loyal to her charge than to him. That reduced the utility of that source. What he needed for an agent was somebody who would be around the Fourth for a sizable portion of the day on a regular basis, someone who was totally loyal to him…

Gendo smiled. Then he placed a call to the First's apartment. Once she arrived at the GeoFront, he would explain her new responsibilities.

* * *

 

The remainder of the weekend passed without further incident. The following Monday, Mireille walked the three Children that lived in her apartment complex to the local high school, then left. As the duty of watching the Children while at school fell to other hands, she was free until early afternoon. She spent the day exploring the city, trying to get a feel for the layout of her new home. When she stopped at a small café for lunch, she was met by Ryoji Kaji.

Kaji had spent the weekend looking into the past of the newest pilot and her guardian. From his perspective as an intelligence officer, the past of Kirika Yumura was fascinating. Never before had he seen a public record so exquisitely detailed – and so obviously fake.

Kirika Yumura was the only child of two people who didn't exist. Her nonexistent parents were currently overseas, working for a company that didn't exist in a town that didn't exist. She was born in a town that was destroyed in an earthquake a year and a half after Second Impact, rendering any attempt to track down her original birth records an exercise in futility. Up until she entered the school where she was tested for pilot potential, her entire life had been spent in various locations that ended up becoming virtual ghost towns as the populations left in search of better livings somewhere that hadn't been as severely changed by the geological repercussions of Second Impact, leaving nobody around that could be questioned about the girl. Everything in her life before her initial testing by the Marduk Institute was either an outright fabrication or something that couldn't possibly be verified. It was almost as if somebody wanted the record to set off a red flag in the minds of anyone who examined it in depth. Finally, he had sent a coded request to his colleagues in the Ministry of Defense to examine the record file. Kaji strongly suspected that the file hadn't existed until shortly before the girl stopped living in places where her presence wouldn't be verifiable.

The connection between the Fourth Child and her guardian was also interesting. Mainly because there hadn't been one until the moment the guardianship started. Mireille Bouquet had simply flown halfway across the world to assume guardianship of a teenaged girl she had never met for no apparent reason. The legality of the guardianship was debatable – Parents who don't exist can't file the paperwork assigning guardianship, after all – but the Corsican woman had apparently convinced the girl to come with her without any real trouble. After that, they had apparently bonded to the point where the girl had refused to come to Tokyo-3 without her guardian.

Kaji decided that there was something decidedly unusual about the two newcomers, and that he should try to figure out what it was. When he spotted Mireille having lunch at a small café, he took the opportunity to introduce himself and fish for any information he could.

Because of the size of the café, Kaji had the perfect excuse for approaching her. He simply asked if he could join her on the grounds that every table had at least one person sitting at it already. After ordering his own lunch, he introduced himself as a coworker and the former guardian of the Second Child. The two engaged in simple small talk over the course of the meal. Eventually, the discussion turned to Mireille's childhood home of Corsica.

Mireille finished one statement with "Of course, the Mediterranean region wasn't affected by Second Impact nearly as much as most other coastal regions, as it's mostly isolated from the ocean."

Kaji took advantage of that opening to change the subject to Second Impact. "You know, a lot of people claim that Second Impact an act of divine punishment."

Mireille smiled. "Somehow, I doubt that they can specify precisely what we were punished for. After all these years, I wonder if anyone will ever be able to tell what the sin within the sin actually was."

It took all of Kaji's training as an intelligence officer not to visibly react to that last statement and just continue with the small talk. The sin within the sin. Taken into context, that would mean the cause of Second Impact. Not the official explanation of a meteor, or the hidden reason of the First Angel, but the real reason, the reason why the First Angel attacked, whatever that was.

The reason for the unusual records came to light. The man in the Action Division of the DGSE who put this together, whoever he was, had to be some kind of genius. Somehow, they had identified a pilot before the Marduk Institute did, quite an accomplishment, considering that they were the only ones who knew how they selected pilots in the first place. Then they attached her to one of their agents and made the pilot's enlistment conditional on the agent coming along. Now the DGSE had a handpicked agent neatly placed within NERV HQ, one that SEELE couldn't get rid of without running the risk of losing the services of an irreplaceable asset. The fabricated records had to be some kind of bait to draw the attention of the various players in the game of espionage between NERV, SEELE, and the various nations of the world. Players such as Kaji himself.

Now, what to do now that he knew? The best thing to do would be to find a way to get the woman to work with him. After all, they were after the same thing: the truth about NERV, SEELE, Second Impact, and the Angels. Having a second set of eyes snooping around would help in figuring out what was going on. She had to have realized that he was also a player, she wouldn't have dropped that little clue otherwise. He'd have to find a way to signal to her that he was interested in an alliance.

The small talk continued through the rest of the meal. Each person paid for their own meal, and they went their separate ways, Kaji still trying to figure out what his next move should be.

* * *

 

Classes that day were punctuated by the arrival of two additional students. The first was Toji Suzuhara, having finally been released from the hospital. He had yet to fully master the use of his new prosthetic leg, and as such was currently using a wheelchair. The second was Kirika Yumura.

Rei didn't know why the Commander had asked her to observe the Fourth Child and report on her actions. She supposed it didn't really matter. He was the Commander, these were his orders, and as such she would follow them. Initial observations from class activities simply showed that the Fourth showed as much interest in the usual lectures on Second Impact as most other members of the class did – virtually none.

Far more noteworthy was the reaction of one of the other pilots to the Fourth. Rei noted that the Third Child would turn and stare at the Fourth for a minimum of thirty seconds at least once every fifteen minutes. Every time he did so, there was a pained expression on his face, one that Rei didn't truly know how to describe.

Beyond that, nothing important enough to bother reporting happened until the end of class. It was a small thing, and had Rei not been intentionally watching the Fourth, she probably would have missed it. When classes let out, Pilot Ikari did not leave until most of the class had already left the room. As he left, Rei noticed that Pilot Yumura's gaze followed him as he walked out the door. Her expression as she watched him go was virtually identical to the expression he had worn while watching her throughout the day.

Rei was unsure as to the meaning of these glances, but decided that it would be best to include them in a report, as the Commander might be able to learn something from them. Unfortunately, she had been placed on cleaning duty that day, and would be unable to observe the two pilots as they left the school.

Shinji was one of the last people out of the school. He paused when he heard the sound of a wheelchair coming up from behind him. As he turned around, he recognized the boy that had tried to hit him when he first came to Tokyo-3. Toji raised himself out of the wheelchair and started walking towards him, leaning heavily against the school's outer wall to support the massive limp in his artificial limb.

"You think you're pretty hot stuff, don't you Ikari?" He said. "Running around in that giant robot of yours. Thanks to you, my sister's in the hospital. And on top of that you went and wrecked by leg as well! Because of your joyriding, I can barely walk. I think it's time somebody taught you a lesson!"

Hearing Toji's ranting brought Shinji's inner torment to a head. He was not in the mood to be blamed for the problems of someone else's sister – not with what had happened to his own. Before Toji could even try to hit him, Shinji drew back and punched him in the face, knocking the taller boy to the ground.

"You've had it easy," Shinji snarled. "Your sister may be hurt, but you can still be with her. I spent ten years way from my sister. Not being able to see her, or call her, or write to her. Not knowing whether or not she was alright. Not being able to comfort her when she was sad. Not even being able to just spend a day together for the sake of enjoying each other's company. Not once in ten years! And when I finally see her again, it turns out that she doesn't recognize me. She doesn't even remember that I ever existed. You're the lucky one here. Your family may be hurting, but its still there."

Shinji drew his fist back for another punch, but when he threw it, a hand caught it before it connected. Shinji looked up to see the person who stopped him.

"Love can sometimes destroy, Ikari-san, but hatred can never save." Kirika said. "And you're not the only one here who's had unpleasant experiences.

"Imagine waking up one day and realizing that you have no idea how you got where you are. Nor do you have any idea as to what you did the day before, or the day before that, or the day before that, or any other day, for that matter. Try spending your days in a world where everyone you meet is a total stranger; including the person you see whenever you look in the mirror. You're luckier than you think. Your memories may not all be happy, but at least you know what they are."

With that, Kirika walked away. Stunned by what he had just learned, Shinji helped Toji to his feet, then tried to wrap his mind around what he had just learned as the other boy staggered back to his wheelchair. His sister hadn't forgotten him, she'd forgotten everything. Somehow, her entire childhood had been stolen away from her.

His sister hadn't come back just yet, but she still could. And if there was any way that Shinji could help her return, he would do it. He would do his best to help her remember who she once was, to restore the past she had been robbed of so cruelly. Then and only then could they truly be together.

* * *

 

Within his lab, Dr Descroix looked at the recently delivered sample. The small, embryo-shaped life form sat frozen within the sealed cube full of Bakelite. The agents sent to get an Angel sample had outdone themselves. Instead of just getting a tissue culture, they had somehow obtained a cryogenically frozen Angel in its entirety. This would provide all the culture samples he would need to stabilize the clones. All that he needed and more.

He hand carried the sample to a secure vault, then went to his office. Once there, he wrote a message to be sent to Breffort.

Sample received. Appears to be in excellent condition and quite suitable for our needs. Project Le Petit Retour will commence as soon as the last of the requisitioned equipment arrives.

Descroix

* * *

 

A/N: Asuka. You can call her reckless. You can call her arrogant. One thing you can't call her is easy to ignore (No matter how hard you try).

DGSE: Direction Generale de la Securite Exterieure (Directorate-General for External Security). France's foreign intelligence service. The Action Division is a subunit of the Operations Division, and is responsible for covert operations.

The line Mireille dropped on Kaji is a quotation from the Langumal manuscript. The full passage reads:

"The man within the man,

The love within the love,

The sin within the sin.

The hermit told unto the sinner,

Les Soldats is with truth."

What does this passage mean? I have no idea.

The fact that Shinji and Kirika are related isn't a secret, but the revelation hasn't had time to spread to anyone outside of the command staff and the Katsuragi household – yet.


	9. Attack

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 9

Attack

A garbled version of what had transpired between Shinji, Toji and Kirika quickly hit the school rumor mill. Over the next few days, the rumormongers of the school compared all the versions of the story going around and come to the conclusion that Kirika was Shinji's estranged sibling, and that she was suffering from a massive case of amnesia. This stood out from most things produced by the school rumor mill in that it was accurate.

The rumor mill was not able to come to a conclusion as to exactly why Kirika had suffered the memory loss. Some people believed that it was the result of an illness. Some people claimed that it was due to a blow to the head. Still others considered the fact that both siblings were pilots (France's lack of discretion concerning 'their' pilot had leaked to the international media) and that their father ran NERV, and decided that this was the result of some complex conspiracy with unknown goals. One person in the 'blunt trauma' faction approached Shinji after school and offered to club his sister with a baseball bat to see if that would reverse the effects. The following day, that student was seen with a black eye.

Rei continued her observation of Kirika. Given her lack of social contacts in the school, she was one of the last in the class to learn of the Fourth's amnesia. She noted this in a report to the Commander, but did not try to speculate as to its cause. Nothing further of note happened to the pilots until an incident a week and a half after Kirika started at the local school.

A number of students in the school had noticed that Kirika's guardian walked her to and from school every day. Nobody was quite sure why. Some of the people who backed the 'health problem' theory as to why Kirika was an amnesiac held that this was so Mireille could keep an eye out for a relapse of whatever Kirika had suffered from. A sizable number of the boys in the school didn't care, as Mireille was nearly as ogle-worthy as Misato, and anything that brought beautiful women around for them to stare at regularly was a good thing. Nobody guessed that the habit was a cover for a security escort.

On this day, however, something went wrong with the normal routine. Asuka and Kirika had been tagged for cleanup duty, so only one of the three pilots Mireille normally escorted was ready to leave at the time she arrived. After a quick phone call to Section 2, it was decided that Mireille would take Shinji back to the apartment complex while a second team would discreetly shadow the other two Children on their way home. Because of this, Mireille was not with Kirika when trouble did happen.

The Most Holy Order of the Angels of Judgment was a doomsday cult that had formed after Second Impact. They held that Second Impact was an act of divine judgment for the sins of man, and those that had managed to survive the initial cataclysm were due to soon follow them into oblivion. They saw the Angels as the instruments of divine wrath and the Evangelions as an abomination that subverted God's will. As a result of this, they felt that the best way to aid in the divine plan was to eliminate the pilots. Foreseeing that some lunatics might want to target the Children, NERV had taken the sensible precaution of limiting the amount of information about the pilots that was distributed to the public domain.

Fortunately for the Order, the French apparently didn't get the memo concerning why the names and pictures of the pilots were not to be posted in the news. After Kirika's image was portrayed in French newspapers and televised news programs, it inevitably leaked out to the internet. Upon seeing these pictures, the Order traveled to Tokyo-3 to accomplish their sacred quest.

Their plan was simple: track the girl down in the city, waylay her, kill her, capture her guardian, and interrogate her about the identities of the other pilots so that they could be killed as well. However, their belief that God would aid them in their mission blinded them to a simple fact. Namely, despite their impressive sounding name, the entire Order was smaller than the group of individuals that had assaulted those two in Paris two weeks before they were approached by NERV, and were slaughtered to a man.

* * *

 

The Order had finally located their targets. Having identified the school where the heretic who dared to battle God's messengers went, they gathered, planning to strike her down after she had left in the afternoon. When Mireille arrived in the afternoon and left with a boy instead of the pilot she was supposed to be guardian of, the Order was confused as to why. Then one of them had the idea that the boy might be another one of the pilots. Elated at this sign that God was aiding their task, half of their number followed Mireille, while the remainder waited for Kirika to emerge.

Mireille felt that there was something odd in the air. She couldn't exactly say what it was, but after years of assassination training and deadly situations, she wasn't about to ignore a feeling that might mean danger was near. So as she carefully deflected Shinji's questions about Kirika away from certain dangerous areas, she shifted her purse to her right arm, and casually slipped her hand into it, feeling for the gun stored within.

Two minutes later, her instincts proved correct. A group of seven men with guns came out from the side streets. As one of them started to raise his weapon, Mireille acted.

Before the man could line up his first shot, Mireille's right arm snapped outward, causing her purse to fly off her arm and into the man's face, blocking his view for a critical second. In the same instant, her left hand grabbed Shinji by the collar and pulled him to the ground. The leader of the group managed to get the purse out of his face, just in time to see that Mireille had been holding on to her gun when she threw it. That was the last thing he noticed before she gunned him down.

The three men who had been with him on that side of the street quickly joined him in death. The three who had approached from the other direction tried to shoot her in the back, but she spun on one foot, causing all their shots to miss as she turned. Three more shots, and the fight was over.

Mireille reclaimed her purse and quickly reloaded. Then she helped Shinji to his feet and started the two of them heading back to the apartment complex at a run. As she did, she pulled out her cell phone and hit a speed dial button.

"This is Bouquet. I have been attacked on 2nd and 17th. Ikari and I are unharmed. Alert the team watching Kirika and Soryu."

* * *

 

Asuka was not happy to be stuck spending time alone with the Fourth Child. The Third's sister was a freaking paranoid, and Asuka considered herself lucky that she hadn't been shot during the 'beer cheer' incident. The fact that the new pilot had a massive gap in her memories wasn't very reassuring, either. There was no telling what might be lurking in the past that Kirika couldn't recall.

Why did all the other pilots have to be so strange? The Fourth was paranoid. The First was practically a robot, who apparently had no life outside her duties. The Third might be a decent teammate, but his massive fixation on the Fourth was getting on her nerves. Didn't the baka spend time thinking about anything other than his sister? Thinking back on the various versions she had heard of what he said in his fight with Toji, the answer might be no.

Asuka noticed that the Fourth had stopped. She was now looking around the street slowly and cautiously, while fingering something in her vest pocket. Taking comfort in the fact that she couldn't possibly have fit a gun into that pocket even if she had been given a concealed carry permit, Asuka addressed the junior pilot.

"What are you standing around for, Fourth Child? Let's go home."

"We're being followed."

"Of course we're being followed. We get tailed by a Section 2 team everywhere we go. Now stop being paranoid and let's get moving!"

As Asuka berated the Fourth, a group of eight men approached. They were not dressed like Section 2 security personnel. And they were all armed. One of them addressed Kirika as he aimed his revolver.

"Foul heretic, for seeking to destroy the messengers of God, you shall be… urk!"

Before he could finish the sentence, Kirika had darted forward, her hand slashing across the man's throat. As the would-be assassin collapsed, blood seeping out from his cut throat, Kirika tossed aside the weapon she had used and caught his gun. Then she dove to the ground, somehow rolling and turning around in one move. She opened fire before the move was complete. Less than ten seconds after she had first moved, seven people were dead or dying in the street.

But there had been eight men, not seven. The last man was still unharmed, and aimed his weapon at Kirika's back. His efforts were in vain. Before he could fire, Kirika had tossed aside her empty weapon and leapt backwards, removing the bow from the front of her uniform as she did so. Her jump took her in a somersault over the attacker's head. As she came down, she wrapped the length of ribbon she held around his throat, and rotated her body so that her foot connected with the middle of his back.

The man went down. Kirika continued to press downward on his back while she throttled him with her makeshift garrote. The man's spine snapped with a sickening crunch, and still she continued to strangle him with the ribbon, not easing the pressure in the slightest. Only when the Section 2 team finally arrived – much too late to have helped had Kirika not dealt with the attackers so readily – and took charge of the crippled survivor did she stop trying to choke the man to death.

Asuka got a look at the holdout weapon the Fourth had used to kill the first attacker when she picked it up and cleaned it off on the man's corpse. Somehow, she had managed to cut a man's throat with her NERV ID card. Suddenly, the fact that the Fourth Child wasn't allowed to carry a concealed firearm didn't seem all that significant to Asuka. The Fourth could – and if necessary, would – turn anything she could get her hands on into a lethal weapon. And use it with all the hesitation and remorse that a normal person would show over stepping on an ant. Trying to keep her from carrying a concealed weapon was pointless. Anything that the Fourth had in her pockets was a concealed weapon, simply by virtue of the fact that she had it.

Asuka thought back to the idiot who had offered to club the Fourth over the head with a baseball bat. The fool was lucky that he had made the offer to Shinji instead of simply trying it. Shinji only gave him a black eye. Kirika would have taken the bat away from him and broken his skull with it.

What in the world could have turned the Fourth into someone who could kill that efficiently – and that casually?

* * *

 

Mireille and Shinji arrived at the apartment complex. After a final dash up the stairs, the two made it to Mireille's apartment. After a quick search of the apartment, Mireille pushed Shinji into a room without any windows and told him to wait there. Then she went to the living room to await either an attack or further instructions from NERV.

Shinji felt around and found the light switch. The room was a bedroom. Looking around, Shinji noticed a book and some papers on a desk. The book was a text from a class that hadn't been held that day. The papers were a partially completed homework assignment from that class, which was due the next day. From that, Shinji knew that the room was Kirika's.

Seizing the chance to learn more about the person his sister had become, Shinji started looking around the room more attentively. There wasn't much to find at a casual glance. Either Kirika hadn't had much opportunity to leave traces of her personality in the room (Which was quite possible, given how little time she had lived there), or she wasn't the kind of person who molded her home to be an extension of herself.

The only books in the room were textbooks and documents from NERV that were permitted to be taken outside of the GeoFront. The clock was a utilitarian model with an alarm but no radio. There was no other means to produce music in the room either, either recorded, transmitted, or home-made. There were no visible signs of any other hobbies. The room appeared to be merely a place where his sister slept, and nothing more.

As Shinji debated whether he should try searching through his sister's closet, desk and dresser, he noticed something lying on its back next to the clock. Picking it up, he realized it was a picture frame. A very familiar picture frame.

After Shinji had realized that his sister's forgetting him was a side effect of a much larger problem, he had looked for the picture that he had thrown at the wall after her initial rejection of him. He hadn't been able to find it. At the time, he had worried that it had been put in the trash and taken to the incinerator. But here it was, in his sister's room. She had taken it.

There was only one possible reason for her taking the photograph of the two of them. She might not remember him, but apparently she wanted to remember, and had taken the photograph in an effort to try to jog her memory.

Shinji smiled.

* * *

 

To an outside observer, Gendo appeared to be reviewing the training budget for the coming month. And he was doing that. But at the same time, he was also considering recent events that threatened to impact his scenario.

Forensic analysis of the portions of the power system that had failed during the last Angel attack had been completed. The report concluded that it was not a natural failure, something that Gendo had suspected from the start, given the near total failure of the system. While components do fail on occasion, the odds that 98 of the circuits in a critical system would fail within a matter of seconds were far too low to be plausible.

From that fact, another conclusion could be made. If the Ninth Angel had been in a position to sabotage the generators, it would not have then needed to assault the GeoFront from the outside. And if there had been a second Angel inside the power plant, it would have attacked Terminal Dogma from inside the GeoFront the moment the power went down. Since that hadn't happened, it was safe to assume that the Angels were not responsible for the blackout. That meant that the blame for the power outage lied in human hands.

As Gendo started to consider what organizations might be interested in NERV's failure, the phone rang.

He picked up the receiver. "Yes?"

"This is Captain Arima. There has been an attempt on the lives of the Second, Third and Fourth Children."

Gendo froze. While he considered all of the pilots other than Rei to be expendable (And even Rei was expendable, in the sense that he needed a Rei, just not necessarily the one currently active), the existence of the other Children was critical to the short-term objectives of the scenario. And while his current surplus of pilots made it so that he could afford to lose a single pilot, losing three at once would severely impair operations.

"What is the Children's status?"

"Agent Bouquet was able to eliminate the ones who attacked the Third Child. All but one of the men who attacked the Second and Fourth are dead. The last one has been taken into custody. The Children are unharmed. We're sending extra teams to get the Children into the GeoFront, and investigative teams to attack scenes to see what we can learn about the attackers."

"Keep me posted."

"Yes, sir."

* * *

 

Fuyutsuki watched as Section 2 agents debriefed the pilots. He found the information revealed in the debriefing rather alarming.

Bouquet's defeat of seven opponents was impressive, but not entirely surprising. All initial reports indicated that she was a very skilled gunfighter. But what had happened at the other fight was totally unexpected.

Fuyutsuki had initially thought that the other eight men were taken down by the four men who were guarding the Second and Fourth Children. But what had actually happened was that the Fourth had managed to kill seven people and disable an eighth before the security detail even noticed that there was any danger. Fuyutsuki was glad he wasn't in the shoes of those guards. Captain Arima was not happy about their laxity, and Gendo would be even less pleased.

Fuyutsuki had seen the surviving assassin being taken away to be questioned. The man had been handcuffed to a gurney, but from what he had overheard, it wasn't strictly necessary. A quick examination by a NERV physician revealed that the would-be killer would never walk again. The Fourth's method of capturing the man was to cripple him for life.

Assuming she had any intention of actually capturing the man. Apparently the Fourth had faced her last attacker with a makeshift garrote. That was a fairly slow method to kill a person, at least when compared to well-placed bullets and slashed jugulars. That gave the Section 2 detail time to take the assassin prisoner. If they hadn't intervened, it was quite possible that Yumura would have kept on strangling the man until he expired. Not that sparing his life so that he could spend the rest of it in a wheelchair in a maximum security prison was much of a mercy.

The Fourth Child completed her debriefing and left the room. Fuyutsuki followed.

"Are you alright?" He asked.

She nodded. "None of them managed to get a shot off."

"That's not what I meant. You just had to kill seven people. Are you feeling alright?"

The Fourth's expression was honestly confused. "Why wouldn't I? It's not like they were anyone I knew."

As the girl walked away, Fuyutsuki considered what she had said. The fact that she could kill without being emotionally affected by it was troubling. But far more disturbing was the fact that she saw that as normal. Most of the people who were capable of killing without remorse fit into two categories: Highly trained soldiers, and the mentally disturbed. And the soldiers tended to know that this kind of mentality was abnormal.

Having a pilot who didn't value human life in general wasn't necessarily a problem. The Third Child didn't appear to care about most people he encountered. The First Child had been carefully conditioned for years to prevent her from caring about anything outside of her duties. Both of them were still functional pilots. But they didn't have the skills needed to kill seven people and cripple an eighth in seconds.

If the Fourth Child wanted to kill somebody, it was highly unlikely that anyone would be able to stop her before the victim was dead. So far, she had only killed people that had attacked her, but Fuyutsuki wasn't sure that he could take that as an assurance that she would only use her lethal skills in self-defense. If she snapped, he didn't want to think of the casualties that would result from trying to subdue her. He'd have to make sure she was carefully watched.

* * *

 

Gendo glared at Captain Arima.

"Report."

Arima looked over his notes. "We've conducted a brief interrogation of the surviving assassin while he was still recovering from medical sedation. From this, we've learned a few things.

"The attackers were members of a doomsday cult calling itself the Most Holy Order of the Angels of Judgment. They had identified the Fourth Child as a result of the publicity she was exposed to after her selection. That leak ultimately stems from some government official in France. We can try to identify the source of that leak, but it's too late to plug it. The Fourth's name and appearance have already been broadcast over the internet and world news services, and there's no telling how many millions of people have seen it." Gendo frowned, and then motioned for Arima to continue.

"Their objective was twofold: First, they planned to eliminate the Fourth Child. Then they planned to capture Agent Bouquet, who they had identified from the same news leak, and interrogate her as to the identities of the other pilots, who would be eliminated at some later point. Apparently the measures taken by countries other than France to keep the Children's identities secret have been mostly successful; all they knew for certain about the other Children was their genders and nationalities.

"Fortunately for us, they had apparently forgotten that the Fourth and her guardian have had experience in dealing with assassination attempts. They were able to eliminate the attackers easily. I make no excuses for the failure of the men assigned to watch the Second and Fourth. Their inability to respond to the threat until it was dealt with by someone they were supposed to be protecting is inexcusable, and I will find out how they allowed this to happen."

Gendo nodded, indicating his willingness to allow that point to drop – for now. Then he brought up a point that had occurred to him.

"Is there any chance that this group was involved in the sabotage of the power plant?"

"The survivor couldn't possibly have been involved. We checked his passport, and he didn't enter the country until after the last Angel attack. I can't say whether or not any of the dead ones might have just yet; we're still investigating their records."

"Is there any chance that this group might attempt another attack?"

"Not likely. The survivor implied that the entire cult was directly involved in today's attacks. If that's the case, there isn't anyone left to plan a second attack. But that doesn't mean that another group can't acquire the same information that they did and plan an attack of their own."

"Agreed. I want a revised set of procedures for discreet escort to be completed and implemented within forty-eight hours. The Second, Third and Fourth Children are not to leave any secured location without Agent Bouquet's escort until that is completed. Section 2 has permitted two severe breaches of security within as many weeks. I will not tolerate a third. Is that understood?"

"Yes, Sir." With that, Captain Arima left the office.

* * *

 

Mireille was having a cup of tea in a break room while she waited for Kirika and the others to finish their debriefings. Hers had been finished fairly quickly, so she had some spare time on her hands. The door opened, and a man walked in.

"Mr. Kaji, wasn't it?" Mireille inquired.

The man nodded. "I hear you had a busy afternoon." He said, heading for the coffee machine.

"You could say that."

"I caught some of what the guys questioning the surviving assassin learned from him. It seems that the people that attacked you are related to something we discussed the other day."

"Oh?" That wasn't something she had expected. The only thing that she had discussed with Kaji that might relate to an attack was an oblique reference to Les Soldats. And she was fairly certain they had nothing to do with this attack. The skills of the would-be killers were nowhere near the standards that she had come to expect from that organization.

"They were part of some group that believed that Second Impact was some form of divine punishment, and objected to man's continued efforts to survive. I doubt they even care what the sin within the sin was, so long as everybody pays the price for it."

Mireille's eyes narrowed when she heard the phrase 'sin within the sin'.

Kaji continued. "If I was in their place, I'd be more interested in learning who the sinner was, and what possible reason he could have for doing something that would affect the entire world so drastically. Wouldn't you?"

Mireille considered what she had just heard. Ryoji Kaji was obviously a spy for some organization or another. And if she interpreted what he had said correctly, he was implying that he was also investigating Les Soldats, and believed that they were somehow responsible for Second Impact. And he was looking for an ally in exposing the truth.

There was no way that she'd trust him completely. But there was no way she'd be able to figure out exactly what her enemies had planned for this massive organization with only Kirika's help. Taking the man on his offer was her best chance of success.

"I agree," she said. "That would be a far more sensible thing to do."

* * *

 

The day was over, and the pilots had all returned to their homes. Kirika and Mireille were going over the events of the day while they waited for dinner to finish cooking.

"Do you think he can be trusted?" Kirika asked.

"I'm not sure. I have no idea who he's working for or what his motivations are. All I can say is that Kaji Ryoji appears to be an enemy of our enemy. As such, he's a potential ally for as long our goals coincide."

"And what are his goals?"

"That's the problem. I don't know. Do you know anything about the man that I don't?"

"Only that he and Captain Katsuragi are ex-lovers."

"I'm afraid that his love life isn't what we need to know about here."

"True."

"Alright, I'll pass some of what we know about Les Soldats to Kaji and see what develops. There's no way we can escape from this mess, not with the whole world knowing what we look like. And if we're going to fight our way out, we need to know who our enemies are."

"I think I might know who one of them is."

"Oh?"

"Rei Ayanami."

"The pilot?"

"Whenever the two of us are together, she watches me unless she has some specific task to perform. Even Shinji doesn't watch me as frequently as she does. It's long passed the point where it could be explained by curiosity. She's doing it for a reason. Add to that the fact that she appears to be absolutely loyal to the Commander and…"

"The most likely explanation is that she's spying on you for the Commander. Hmm. I wonder if someone in Section 2 is spying on me. I'll have to look into that."

At that point, the oven timer went off. Realizing that they had exhausted all the information they had to work with at the time, the two set aside their discussion and had dinner.

* * *

 

Descroix looked at the equipment that he had just received. The human-sized cloning tank had been completed ahead of schedule. Going over the inventory he had on hand against what he needed for Le Petit Retour, he realized that all he was missing was the myostimulation devices.

Thinking about the tasks to come in the project, he realized that he wouldn't need the last component for some time. There was no point in artificially inducing muscle development until the clone was close to completion. That meant that there was no longer any reason to delay beginning the project.

Descroix called to his assistants and had them start setting up the equipment. Once it was in place, he could start the most radical project he had ever attempted – bringing one of the deadliest women in the world back from the dead.

* * *

 

A/N:

I actually don't have anything to say about the chapter itself, except for this:

This chapter is dedicated to the memory of a man who, seventy-one years ago, piloted against a threat which, while not nearly as great in magnitude as that which the Angels and SEELE represent in Evangelion, was far more serious in truth due to the fact that it was real: Captain William Kramer, US Army Air Corps, 11/3/23-3/31/2008.

Rest in peace, grandfather.


	10. Rebirth

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 10

Rebirth

Time passed. The investigation of the cult that had attacked Kirika and Mireille was closed after it was discovered that the crippled prisoner was the only member of the cult still living. The pilots continued with their regular schedule of sync tests and simulated exercises.

Joint exercises between the various pilots had complications. Rei was disliked by Shinji and Asuka, and was not trusted by Kirika. Asuka did not trust Kirika. It was uncertain what the unusual dynamic between Shinji and Kirika would result in when piloting, but as they were both assigned to the same EVA, it wasn't an issue that was likely to come up in the near future. As a result of this, the only true team that had formed out of the pilots was Shinji and Asuka.

The only interruption to the routine was the arrival of the 10th Angel. Despite the gradual improvement in her sync ratio, Kirika was deemed unsuitable for the engagement plan that was developed for the attacker, as it depended on mobility, not long-range bombardment. So Shinji, Rei and Asuka were sent out to catch an enormous living bomb, kill it before it detonated itself, and hope that doing so would not result in an explosion similar to what would have happened had it impacted.

Fortunately, the combined AT fields of three EVAs were able to direct most of the blast upwards, reducing the damage inflicted to the area to creating yet another man-made lake in progress. The pilots all returned unharmed, though they did have to deal with Asuka's highly pleased reaction when she realized that since she had landed the killing blow, she was now tied with Shinji for top pilot at 3 ½ kills each. Since Shinji's last kill had been four battles previous (And that one had been shared with Asuka), it was quite possible that she would be able to claim sole ownership of the #1 title in a few more battles.

While Shinji didn't really care who the best pilot was, so long as they kept winning, he did start wishing that she wouldn't be so vocally pleased with herself about her ranking.

After that battle, things quickly returned to the normal routine, until about three weeks after the failed attack by the cultists.

* * *

It was lunchtime at school. Shinji had gotten in the habit of eating his lunch near Kirika in the hopes of coaxing his sister into interacting with him more. Most of the time it didn't work, but he still continued the habit, spending the meal chatting with Kensuke and trying to drop large hints that she would be welcome to join in the conversation.

Kirika was eating her lunch quietly when she overheard Kensuke talking.

"The UN military has finally finished cleaning up the civil war in North Africa. Maybe things will quiet down there for a while. Things were pretty ugly there until Noir took out the rebel leader… What was his name? Oh, yes, Balsan, that was it."

Kirika started paying more attention to the boys monologue when she heard the words 'Noir' and 'Balsan'. She remembered Balsan quite well. She had been the one to kill him, and had nearly been killed herself when his subordinates came looking for revenge. Was this some subtle attempt to get her to expose her other life? Or just a coincidence?

"That must have been an impressive fight. I wish that somebody had gotten the battle on film somehow…"

As Kensuke went on and on, Kirika wondered what was so impressive and dramatic about breaking into a man's home and shooting him in his sleep. Then she came to a sudden realization. Someway, somehow, she had acquired a groupie.

Noir was a semi-forgotten legend, a dark rumor passed from generation to generation within the criminal underworld for centuries. The only thing about those rumors that had any truth to them was that to cross Noir was certain death. Yet Kensuke had managed to interpret Noir's actions to be those of an avenger hunting down those criminals the authorities could not touch. The misinterpretation was profoundly wrong, yet strangely flattering.

Kirika had never been involved in the process of finding targets. That had always been Mireille's job. Kirika didn't know why her partner only chose to take contracts against criminals, but given that choice, the confusion as to why they were doing the jobs was understandable. Granted, not all of their contracts had been against obvious criminals, but on the other hand, the jobs against non-obvious criminals tended to be done more discretely than the other jobs were, as they tended to be more lightly guarded.

The thought that their targets were selected to make the world a better place was ludicrous. Yes, one country had been able to end a civil war because of their actions. At least one other country would not suffer a civil war after they had eliminated that group of coup facilitators. Various parties around the world would potentially suffer less because criminal organizations, terrorist groups, and corrupt officials had been targeted. But not all their contracts were like that. Some of them were simply acts of vengeance against harm that had already been done, requested simply because it would make their employer feel better. The retired KGB officer that Kirika had killed in St Petersburg had not been in any position to commit another act of ethnic purging, even if he had been inclined to do so. But the survivors of his previous act of genocide, more than fifty years previous, hadn't cared about that. So Kirika had gunned down a dying old man who had devoted his last days to caring for the homeless and impoverished as a self-imposed penance for the crimes of his youth.

Kirika was sorely tempted to burst out laughing and correct the boy for how hopelessly wrong he was about her calling. But she knew better than to do that. She would like to think it was because doing so would identify her as an internationally wanted criminal, but there was another reason as well. That reason was sitting next to Kensuke.

Kirika still couldn't remember anything about the girl that Shinji saw whenever he looked at her, but she did remember what had happened to the boy when he learned that she didn't remember him. She didn't want to inflict that kind of torment on a person again if she could help it. She was a killer, not a torturer.

And because of that, she had to make sure that Shinji never found out his sister was a killer. That the Kirika Ikari he knew died the moment she murdered the Bouquets ten years ago, assuming she had lasted that long. The knowledge that the sister he loved had been turned into a living weapon would likely destroy the boy completely.

She knew that she would have to leave the boy behind. Once the Angels were dealt with, she and Mireille would fade into the background, have their faces surgically altered, create new identities for themselves, and probably never see the people they knew in Tokyo-3 ever again. And when that happened, Shinji would lose his sister again, this time for the rest of his life.

Kirika wasn't sure if she could ever return to being who she had once been. But she didn't want to destroy the image of that long-forgotten person that Shinji treasured. He might have been able to understand her killing those men that had attacked her, but he wouldn't be able to understand her killing for profit. The very concept would shatter the image he had clung to for the past decade.

So she would let Kensuke keep his illusions, and make certain Shinji didn't know the truth about Noir's nature, or that she was Noir. Allowing Shinji to fondly remember a dream might be a paltry gift, but it was the only gift she had to give.

* * *

There was a sync test that day, so after school, the pilots were escorted to the GeoFront. As they made their way towards the test area, the group ran into a familiar face.

"Kaji!" Asuka shouted joyfully, running over to her crush/ex-guardian.

"Hello, Asuka" He answered, gently prying her off his arm.

Mireille had been rummaging around in her purse for something. Apparently giving up for the moment, she approached the older man.

"Hello again, Mr. Kaji" she said, offering her hand.

"Hello, Ms Bouquet." He replied, taking her hand in both of his. "How nice to see your lovely face again."

The apparently romantic scene was ruined by the sound of snarling from two directions. One source of that snarling was Asuka. The other was Misato, who had just arrived and was equally unamused by the sight.

"Don't you have something you need to be doing, Kaji?" Misato asked, in a tone that implied that if he valued his health he'd better come up with something that required him to be somewhere else whether he had any work to do or not. Kaji apparently took the hint. He bid his farewells to the group and went on his way. The group continued on their way to the testing area.

Misato took Shinji aside for a brief word when they reached their destination. The other pilots entered without him, finding Ritsuko waiting for them.

"Today's exercise will be different from normal. As you may know, we've been developing and installing improved components for the Evangelions continuously since we first succeeded in creating a functional unit.

"The plug suits you wear while piloting were designed to aid in reducing signal noise while synchronizing with your EVAs. But that design was made with the original design of the synchronization equipment in mind. It's entirely possible that the suits are no longer suited for that purpose. Today's test is to examine that possibility."

"So instead of using our plug suits, we are to attempt to synchronize with our EVAs in our normal apparel?" Rei asked.

"No. In order to get a proper baseline for this test, material that is extraneous to synchronization needs to be kept to an absolute minimum."

"WHAT?" Asuka yelled, quickly figuring out what that meant. "You expect us to pilot naked?"

"Correct."

"There is no way I'm going to let the Third peep on me." Then Asuka looked around. "Where is the Third, anyway?"

"Since we have more pilots than we do test bodies, we thought it would be less awkward if we arranged for the girls to do this as a group. Shinji is probably on his way home right now. He'll be doing this later in the week."

Asuka tried to come up with more objections, but they were countered one by one. Eventually, the three girls went to the locker room to undress and then headed for the special showers that Ritsuko had set up as a preparation for the unusual test.

* * *

The sync test didn't work out as well as Ritsuko had hoped. The test had barely gotten started when the 11th Angel attacked. While every previous Angel had been an enormous entity that tried to force its way into the GeoFront, this one was microscopic, infiltrating through stealth. Once it had slipped in, it had attacked the MAGI and attempted to force a self-destruct. Fortunately, Ritsuko was able to create a virus that tricked the Angel into destroying itself before it had completed the hack.

Once the threat had been dealt with, NERV technicians began cleanup work: running diagnostics on the hacked MAGI units, carefully checking equipment for Angel contamination, and replacing those things which had been contaminated. It would be over an hour before anyone remembered about the pilots, whose entry plugs had been ejected into the lake.

Misato opened a voice-only channel to the entry plugs, to be greeted by Asuka's voice.

"What the hell is going on out there Misato? What kind of screwy sync test is this?" She demanded.

"A situation has occurred here." Misato replied. "The test has been cancelled. You're currently in the lake. Get out of your entry plugs and swim to shore. I've sent some female staffers to bring your clothes and some towels."

Kirika's voice entered the conversation. "Major, I'm afraid there's a problem with that plan."

"What's that?"

"I can't swim."

Asuka considered that statement. How could the Fourth not know how to swim? Every girl in school used the pool at gym time… Now that she thought about it, she had never once seen the Fourth use the pool. Perhaps she was telling the truth.

"Hmm. Asuka, can you help Kirika get to shore?"

"I'm on it."

Towing a second person through the water took more effort than Asuka thought it would, but she was able to get herself and Kirika to shore. As the water washed the LCL off her body, Asuka quietly hoped that the lake was not used to store the GeoFront's drinking water. She didn't want to know what adding several thousand gallons of LCL to a reservoir would do to the water's potability.

After they had reached the shore, the three pilots waited for the promised delivery of clothing. As they did, Asuka looked around the area, and caught a glimpse of Kirika's left side. Or more accurately, the rather ugly-looking scar on her left side, just below the ribs.

"How did you get that?" Asuka asked.

Kirika turned towards her, revealing a similar scar on the left side of her hip. The second injury had healed more cleanly, but it was also obviously more recent.

"They're bullet wounds." Kirika answered.

_Bullet wounds?_ The two wounds had clearly been inflicted at different times, so that meant… "You've had people try to kill you at least three times?"

"More like twenty or so over the past year."

_Twenty?_ That meant that she'd had people attack her every two to three weeks before she came to Tokyo-3. Asuka finally understood why the Fourth was so paranoid – and realized that she was fully justified in being so.

* * *

The pilots made their way out of the GeoFront, accompanied by Misato, who was privately enjoying the fact that due to the unusual nature of the Angel, combined by the fact that the Commander was trying to conceal the fact that the hacking of the MAGI was Angel-related for some reason, none of the paperwork connected to the attack would be landing on her desk.

After Rei left to make her own way home, Misato drove the other pilots back to their apartment complex. When they reached their floor, they started down the hallway, when suddenly Kirika froze outside Misato's apartment. There was a tantalizingly familiar odor in the air, something that smelt of miso and fish. Something that she knew from somewhere, but couldn't recall exactly where.

"Something smells good." She commented.

Misato opened the door. Mireille and Shinji were inside. Mireille rose to greet the arrivals.

"Welcome back. Shinji's been making dinner, it should be ready soon." Mireille then turned to address Kirika alone. "We've been invited to join them."

Kirika looked around. Sitting on the table was a bubbling pot. The smell that had been drawing her attention was coming from the pot. Seeing the pot helped her realize exactly what she smelled.

"Ishikari nabe." She said, her mouth starting to water.

A few minutes later, the group was seated around the table, helping themselves to the meal. Pen-Pen also joined in, having emerged from the refrigerator and demanded a share once he realized that there was a large amount of stewed salmon on the table. Kirika ate slowly, savoring the familiar flavor that she hadn't tasted in quite some time.

As she ate, she wondered why the smell and taste were so familiar. She had certainly never had this while at the manor, or while she was by herself, or while she was with Mireille. While she could hardly remember every meal that she had ever had, that conclusion could be reached easily enough. She hadn't owned a hot pot when she was living by herself. Mireille didn't own one either. And since the Soldat manor was kept in its 11th century state for reasons of tradition, the electrical system there consisted entirely of a small gas-powered generator that was used exclusively to charge the batteries of the satellite phones. An electric hot pot would have been a useless piece of cookware there, even if somebody had felt like making oriental cuisine, which didn't happen often.

There was only one possible explanation for why the meal was so familiar. Kirika Yumura might never have had ishikari nabe before, but Kirika Ikari might have. She had just remembered something from her original life. She had just learned something about the carefree child she had once been. A favorite dish might be a fairly minor thing to remember, but it was a start.

* * *

When Kaji returned home, he pulled out the envelope that he had palmed from inside Mireille's sleeve. He carefully removed the contents of the envelope, curious to see what the DGSE agent was offering him as the opening move in their tentative alliance.

Inside, he found three photocopied documents. Looking closely at the pages, it seemed that the originals that the copies were made from were very old. More than that he couldn't tell immediately, as two of the documents were in French, and the third was in Italian. Turning on his computer, Kaji went to a site with a translation engine on it, and started translating the documents into Japanese, being careful to translate the words in a random order so that anyone trying to figure out what he was looking into would have a hard time doing so.

The first document looked like some strange religious passage. It read:

_The man within the man,_

_The love within the love,_

_The sin within the sin._

_The hermit told unto the sinner,_

_The soldiers are with truth_.

Kaji paused to consider the third line of the strange passage. The sin within the sin. The same line that she had dropped on him at the café. The phrase apparently had multiple meanings for the young woman. He went on to the second document, which appeared to be another religious passage.

_A sinner,_ _once passed away,_

_Will never return._

_But the sins will never vanish,_

_And the love will never die._

_The hermit also spoke thus:_

_The blood of the soldiers_

_Will seep through the wilderness_

_And flow into the great river._

Again with the strange references. But if the sin mentioned was Second Impact, then he could see the point. The effects of that would never go away, unless somebody conspired to set off a second explosion on the North Pole in an attempt to realign the planet. Which would only repeat the upheavals that happened after the first planetary realignment. But who were the hermit, the sinner, and the soldiers?

The third document was not religious in nature. It was a legal contract, transferring a significant amount of property and authority from some Italian nobles to the Greone family. Kaji wondered what connected this document to the other two, when he decided to translate the signatures on the bottom of the contract. That was when he saw it. The contract was witnessed by someone identifying himself as 'A man of the soldiers'. Whoever the soldiers were, they were apparently involved in this transfer of power. Funny. He could have sworn he'd heard the name Greone before somewhere…

Moving to a news site, Kaji ran a search for the name. Where he discovered that it was the name of a Mafia clan. The third document recorded the founding of organized crime in Italy. And whoever the soldiers were, they had apparently arranged for this to happen. And this same organization was somehow connected to NERV.

It seemed that Mireille was after a different target than he was. But that didn't make her goal unimportant. Whether there was a connection between SEELE and the soldiers or not, an international criminal organization having influence on a government agency with weapons that could ignore nuclear assaults was not a good thing.

Kaji offhandedly wondered how the DGSE had managed to acquire a historical document that belonged to a Mafia family. Then he took a closer look at the article he had pulled up. Apparently, some months before, the Greone family's leadership had been decapitated. Three times. Over the course of a week. Apparently, when whatever unit of the DGSE Action Directorate Mireille was in decided to seize an objective, they were willing to kill anyone who got between them and what they were after. He'd have to remember that, and try to stay out of the way when they decided to act here.

* * *

Gendo was in his office, plotting. With more than half of the Angels defeated, it was time to begin active preparations for the next phase of the scenario. He had just dispatched Ritsuko to the secure storage area to retrieve a key component of the scenario and prepare it for its role.

He was certain that the plan to embed the First Angel into his hand would go smoothly. SEELE was still under the impression that Adam was in a secure vault in Germany. Efforts had been made to ensure that a replica that could fool casual inspection was placed in the vault in the Third Branch when Ryoji removed the Angel. Gendo had also seen to it that no records were made of Adam's storage in Tokyo-3, even by the vaguest of descriptions. And he was fully confident that the doctor was up to performing the procedure in question.

As such, he was surprised when he received a phone call from Dr Akagi.

"You did say that the sample you wanted me to look at was in bin A2-243-501, right?" She asked.

"That is correct, Doctor." He responded.

"Well, I just checked, and the bin is empty. And the records show that the bin has always been empty. Could you double-check your records and see if you misread them? I'll be searching down here to see if the sample was misfiled." With that, Ritsuko hung up.

Gendo paled. His scheme had backfired on him. By hiding all evidence that the First Angel was here to prevent SEELE from noticing its theft from Germany, he had made himself vulnerable to the same threat here. How can you investigate the loss of something that was never there? Any overt probe into the matter would only tip off SEELE that he had had Adam in the first place, which would tell them that he had betrayed them.

After two hours of searching the storage vault, it was clear that this was not a filing error. The First Angel was gone, leaving Gendo with only questions. Who had taken it? Why had it been taken? And where had it gone?

* * *

She awoke slowly, shaking her head to clear the fog that had settled in her mind. She sat up, and started looking around the room, trying to figure out where she was. She couldn't remember ever being in this place before. Then again, with her brain still half-asleep, she was having trouble remembering anything without a few moments of thought.

What was her name? Kimberly? Carrie? No, wait… it was Chloe. Chloe… Leitner? Lehmann? She couldn't remember what her last name was at the moment, but she was under the impression that it started with an L.

As Chloe's mind fully awakened, she tried sorting through her memories to figure out what she was doing in what looked to be a hospital room.

She had just finished an assignment in China, working to eliminate a Triad leader who had betrayed his superiors in Les Soldats. The job had come with an unexpected bonus: Soldat agents had managed to maneuver the other two Noir into joining in the hunt. That had given her the opportunity to work with Kirika again.

As Chloe thought about her ex-partner, a quiet smile crept up her lips. She had admired the other girl ever since she had witnessed her first kill. To see a five-year-old girl already so well on her way to becoming the perfect killer that Altena, their teacher, commander, and mother in every way that mattered wanted them to become had fixed Kirika as the ideal image that the four-year-old Chloe sought to live up to. From that day onward, Chloe had pushed herself constantly, striving to be worthy of serving alongside the other girl.

Years of continuous training (and the occasional assignment) alongside her role model came to an end one day when Altena gave Kirika a mission she had to complete alone. A mission to bring in the third Noir, who had been trained in ignorance of her fate, and lead her through the trials. A mission that required her to have all of her memories blocked away.

It would be months before two met again. When it finally happened, Kirika didn't recognize her former partner, and treated her like a total stranger. She had fitted seamlessly into a partnership with the spare sapling, leaving Chloe behind. The interloper had taken Chloe's place as colleague, and even managed to become Kirika's confidant at a level that Chloe had never achieved in years of trying.

Chloe seethed at the continual sight of someone else living the life she had dreamed for herself. Kirika was _her_ partner, not the partner of this Corsican newcomer. She hated the fact that she was under orders to see to it that the extra survived until the final trial. She couldn't wait until that day finally came. Then the backup candidate could be disposed of, and Chloe could take her rightful place as Kirika's partner once again. Then, once they had become true Noir, she could work on becoming Kirika's partner on more levels than just the professional.

Until then, Chloe would just have to wait… and dream. Hopefully Mireille's hatred for Les Soldats over her parent's execution for treason wouldn't poison Kirika against her destiny to become one of Les Soldats' hands. Chloe had tried to convince Kirika that Les Soldats wasn't her enemy in China, but she wasn't sure if she was able to reach her with the influence that daily contact brought Mireille.

What had happened after she had left China? That was still fuzzy. She vaguely recalled getting a phone call telling her to report to a lab to assist in a special project. She couldn't remember anything beyond that. What had happened to cause her to be hospitalized?

A nurse entered the room.

"I see that you're finally getting better, young lady. We were getting worried. You have been ill for several months." She said.

"Several… months?" Chloe asked.

The nurse nodded, and then started taking her temperature, pulse, and blood pressure, noting them down on a chart. Then she asked to see if Chloe was strong enough to walk. After Chloe was able to take a few shaky steps, the nurse left. A few minutes later, Chloe hobbled to the bathroom. When she turned on the light and looked in the mirror, she gasped in surprise.

Chloe had always been light-skinned, but now she was so pale as to be practically albino. Her hair, normally a red so dark as to be nearly purple, was now a pale blue. Her eyes, once a blue so dark as to be almost black, were now red. What kind of disease had she caught to change her appearance that dramatically? Chloe doubted that her own cousin would be able to recognize her as she was now.

Chloe paused, and reconsidered her previous thought. Cousin? What cousin?

* * *

A/N: Chloe Langley is dead. Long live Chloe Ayanami. I have Devavrata's question on what the connection between Le Grand Retour and the Human Instrumentality Project was to credit for the inspiration for this little twist.

As a reference point for those who haven't seen Noir, the joint operation with all three Noir in China takes place shortly after the death of Mireille's uncle (mentioned in chapter 2), and some time before the revelation as to Noir's true nature (mentioned in chapter 3).

I know that the battles with the 10th and 11th are very close to canon. That's because Noir doesn't have any skills that would be useful against those two.

'The Soldiers' is the English translation of the organization name 'Les Soldats'. Kaji is translating the documents too thoroughly. Of course, the really strange thing is that when I think over the Langumal Manuscript passages, they make more sense when taken in reference to Evangelion than they do when taken in reference to Noir.

Can Kirika swim? You'd think that Altena would want her hired killers to know this basic survival skill, but in order to learn how to swim, you need water that's deep enough to swim in, and there's nothing deeper than waist deep at the manor. Furthermore, in episode 4, when Noir is operating out of a beach house (Mainly so that that the animators would have an excuse to get Mireille into a bikini, as far as I can tell), Kirika didn't pack a bathing suit, and didn't bother to get one after this was pointed out.

Ishikari nabe – a Japanese dish that is a regional specialty of Hokkaido. It is sliced salmon stewed with vegetables in a miso-based broth. It is not eaten as a stew, it is a 'hot pot' dish, in which the ingredients are cooked at the table, and the diners remove what they wish to eat from the broth and eat it with a dipping sauce. Thanks to gunman for suggesting that Shinji using a favorite childhood meal as a way to remind Kirika of her past.


	11. Mothers

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 11

Mothers

Something about the third document that Kaji had received was bothering him. After tracking down more information of the Greone family and the circumstances behind the deaths of three of its leaders in rapid succession, he learned that one of the deaths was the result of an internal dispute – one that lasted maybe ten seconds. The other two deaths were accredited to the internationally wanted criminal known by the alias of Noir.

Had Noir attacked the Greones in order to acquire that document? What was the connection between the DGSE and Noir? Kaji ran a data search on the mysterious killer and quickly got a list of his most prominent killings.

The leader of a revolutionary force in North Africa, with a sizable portion of his headquarters staff joining him the next day. Two fifths of the UN forces that had been sent to contain the insurrection he led were French.

The head of a Triad clan, along with several dozen of his subordinates, and his top assassin. The clan in question was involved in the smuggling of heroin into Europe through French ports.

The leader of a group of extremely corrupt members of the Parisian police force. The night after he died, the judge who kept coming up with highly dubious reasons as to why the evidence compiled against the corrupt officers by Internal Affairs was inadmissible in court was also killed.

An entire cell of terrorists operating in Paris. This group had been able to identify and kill undercover counterterrorism officers at will. Along with the terrorists, a very senior counterterrorism officer was killed as well. Later investigation showed that the officer in question had been taking bribes from the terrorists to sell out his men.

As Kaji looked over the basic information he had found, the connection between all the cases came to him. In every single case, the deaths brought advantage to the French government. The DGSE had been removing threats to their country and its citizens by creating the ultimate 'black' operations unit. Kaji chuckled at the inside joke that he had discovered.

Looking at the dates of the killings, Kaji noticed something else. The first Noir killing happened less than two weeks after Mireille Bouquet became the guardian of Kirika Yumura. The connection between Mireille and Noir was rather simple. She, or rather, they, were Noir.

The sheer complexity of the planning behind this scheme was boggling. Breaking into the highly classified records of the Marduk Institute (Which was getting more mysterious by the day. By his count, at least 105 of the 108 companies that formed the Institute didn't exist). Finding out that Commander Ikari's son was chosen to be a pilot and gambling that the other child could also become a pilot. Tracking the girl down to wherever she had gone (Kaji had looked into the official explanation of Kirika's disappearance and quickly learned that she had never been sent to the deceased acquaintance of Gendo) and making her disappear without leaving any evidence as to where she had gone, or even that she had ever been there to begin with. Investing years of effort into training the girl until she was capable of killing seven people and crippling an eighth in seconds without hesitation or remorse. And then, as an encore, sending her and the person selected to be her partner out to eliminate various enemies of the state while they were waiting for NERV to take the bait. The only thing that didn't fit was Kirika's apparent amnesia. Was that intentional, or an accident? Or a ruse? If so, for what purpose?

There was only one possible explanation for why the DGSE wanted to infiltrate a pair of elite assassins into NERV. They weren't there to track down the agents of this 'soldiers' organization, they were there to track them down and exterminate them. Kaji was suddenly very glad that he had decided to try to work with Bouquet instead of against her. The alternative could have been lethal.

* * *

 

Another day, another sync test. This time, Ritsuko had come up with another idea for something more exotic than the regular tests. Unlike the previous idea she had come up with and attempted to implement the day the 11th Angel attacked, this idea didn't involve personal embarrassment and had the potential to have an immediate payback if successful.

The theory behind the experiment was simple: In times of war, both people and equipment get damaged. There was also no guarantee that an Evangelion and its pilot would both be out of commission at the same time. As such, it was possible that NERV could end up in a situation where one Evangelion could not deploy even if it was operational, simply because the pilot was incapacitated.

To avoid this possibility, Ritsuko proposed to have the pilots attempt to sync with the Evangelions nominally assigned to the other pilots. If the experiment worked, then the potential problem could be resolved by shuffling the pilot roster until every active EVA had a pilot, even if its usual pilot was unfit for duty for some reason.

In order to reduce the potential problems should an Evangelion go out of control as EVA-00 did during Rei's first attempt to synchronize with it, only one pilot was going through the experiment at a time. As an additional precaution, a second pilot was observing the experiments in his or her normal EVA to be ready to contain the unit under test in the event of a berserker incident.

The first test was to see if Kirika could pilot EVA-00.

"EVA-00 has activated," reported Maya. "The pilot's synchronization ratio is five points below her current level in EVA-01"

"That's acceptable," Ritsuko decided. "It's still high enough that she can pilot. We now have a pilot who can use multiple units." Ritsuko opened a communication window. "How are you doing in there, Kirika?" She asked.

"This unit feels… strange." Was the reply.

"Strange? What do you mean?"

"It's much less friendly than EVA-01 is."

Ritsuko and Maya exchanged a confused look. 'Friendly' wasn't a word normally used to describe a 100 meter tall war machine, even ones that were technically alive.

"Friendly?"

"Whenever I sync with EVA-01, it always seems that it recognizes me and welcomes me. EVA-00 just seems to acknowledge that I'm here and is willing to put up with me."

Misato walked up to the microphone. "Don't worry, Kirika-chan." She said teasingly. "EVA-00 just met you. I'm sure that it will be friendlier when it has the chance to get to know you."

"If you say so, Misato-san. But Unit 01 has always been that way, even the first time I piloted."

None of the women in the control room caught the glance that Gendo and Fuyutsuki exchanged at that revelation.

"We've learned all we needed to know from this experiment." Gendo announced. "The Fourth Child can stand down. Prepare the First for the activation test with Unit 01."

* * *

 

Within the massive frame of EVA-01, the soul of Yui Ikari drowsed. For ten years she had been trapped inside the enormous biomechanical construct, unable to do anything but watch as the world progressed around her. The thing that bothered her the most about being trapped in the Evangelion was being separated from her children. To her, the selection of her children as pilots meant the end of ten years of separation. And now that they had been reunited, her heart ached to see what had happened to them.

In addition to being separated from his mother, Shinji had also forcibly taken away from his sister. And even though the two were now reunited, in a way they were still separated. Yui had tried to comfort her son, but the only time she had ever been able to reach him was when she had intervened to save him from the Fourth Angel. The rest of the time, he just couldn't hear her. At least his sorrow had lessened with the hope that he might one day help Kirika remember the girl she had once been.

But Kirika's scars were even deeper than Shinji's. Her daughter had had her capacity for caring peeled away over the course of the years, leaving an emotionless killer behind. Only over the course of the past year had she slowly regained the ability to be an actual person instead of a living weapon. And over the course of that year, she had been steeped in pain, grief, and betrayal. The poor girl was trapped between the fear of loneliness, the fear of being betrayed by those she approached to ease her loneliness, and the fear of losing those same people to death. Yui had been able to contact her daughter, but only for a few brief moments every time she synchronized with EVA-01, not long enough to communicate anything of significance.

Yui sensed a second presence touching her mind. Was one of her children visiting her? Yui turned her senses to the visitor.

The visitor was not one of her children. Yui wasn't even sure if the visitor was human. There was something decidedly off about the girl who was trying to synchronize with her. Looking deeper into the mind of the visitor, she saw an unwavering loyalty to her husband.

Yui may have loved her husband once, but that was before she learned what had happened to her children. Gendo was at least partially responsible for their suffering, and she couldn't find a single piece of evidence that he had ever attempted to make amends to them for that. Someone who was absolutely loyal to a man who could allow that much harm to come to his own children and show no remorse for the consequences was not someone she wanted to know.

* * *

 

"We're getting unexpected feedback from Unit 01!" Maya shouted.

"Asuka, get ready!" Ristuko barked. "EVA-01 may be going berserk!"

"I'm on it." Asuka replied.

EVA-02 got into position to intercept EVA-01 in case it broke free of its restraints and attacked the observation deck as EVA-00 had the first time Rei attempted to pilot it. Unfortunately, that wasn't what happened.

EVA-01 abruptly ejected the entry plug. As the Evangelion was still bound by its restraints to a wall, the plug rapidly bounced between the machine and the wall as it worked its way free. The continual impacts cracked the plug, causing LCL to spray out of the leaks. Then the plug finally worked its way free and rocketed towards the ceiling, slamming into it at high speed. After a few seconds, the jets propelling the ejection gave out, and the plug crashed to the floor.

Gendo ran out of the observation deck and made his way towards the test room. He didn't make it. Someone in Section 2 had apparently remembered what had happened the last time Rei had been injured in an activation test, and two agents tackled the Commander to prevent him from trying to force open a superheated entry plug a second time. At the same time, a team of men with hoses started spraying down the plug so that it could be cooled enough to safely open.

The first time that Rei had been in an accident like this, the integrity of the entry plug had not been compromised. As a result, the LCL in the flooded plug had absorbed a great deal of the impacts. She wasn't so lucky this time. With the LCL drained from the plug due to all of the cracks, there was no liquid to act as a shock absorber. Rei Ayanami had been repeatedly slammed against the control console and sides of the plug at high speed, and the results were not pretty.

The remaining tests scheduled for that day were canceled.

* * *

 

"This was not in the scenario." Gendo commented.

Fuyutsuki could only nod in agreement.

The knowledge that the Fourth could sense the souls with the Evangelions, if only for a brief instant at activation, was intriguing. Even more interesting was the fact that Yui apparently recognized her daughter whenever she piloted. But the incident with Rei was far more important.

While Yui was apparently willing to allow her children to pilot EVA-01, she was less willing to allow others to do so. While the Second Child had yet to even attempt to do so, what had happened to the First made the prospects of that test less than promising. And since Soryu couldn't be replaced like Ayanami could, it had been decided to not take the risk at this time.

Having Rei unable to use EVA-01 reduced the flexibility of the scenario considerably. In addition to not being able to use his most loyal pilot in his most powerful Evangelion, Gendo also lost the option of using the dummy plug to control Unit 01. The prototype plugs were all based on Rei's data, and Yui had made it quite clear that she would not accept Rei. And there was no way to get any of the other pilots to go through the dummy plug imprinting process without inviting a large number of questions.

At least one setback from this incident could be remedied easily.

"Have Doctor Akagi activate the Third. Have her isolated from the remainder of the pilots to keep anyone from wondering why she isn't injured."

* * *

 

Ritsuko entered the ready room where the pilots had been told to wait while Rei was taken to the emergency room.

"Rei will recover, but she'll be in intensive care for some time. It will be at least a month before she's ready to pilot again. In the meantime, Kirika will take Rei's place as pilot of Unit 00."

As the pilots absorbed this, Kirika recalled what she had seen of Rei as the girl had been carted away. Kirika might not be qualified to perform medical treatment more complicated than first aid, but her knowledge of anatomy and how it acted when abused was quite extensive. Knowledge of how the body worked was quite useful in figuring out the best way to make it stop working, after all. And her diagnosis of Rei's battered body was that her injuries were permanently crippling, if not outright lethal. She had seen the way Rei's head had flopped around as the gurney turned a corner. Human heads only moved like that when they had broken necks.

How could Rei make a full recovery from that? Did NERV have some method to repair a critically damaged spinal cord? If they did, why hadn't this treatment been discussed in every medical journal on the planet? And that didn't even begin to cover the internal injuries implied by the large number of red splotches on Rei's white plug suit and around her mouth. Kirika wouldn't have been surprised to learn that the injuries the other girl had received while knocked around extended to ruptured organs. By rights, Rei should be dead within hours, assuming that she wasn't dead already.

So why was Dr Akagi claiming that a person who was either dead or dying would be perfectly fine within a month? Something was definitely wrong with this situation.

* * *

 

Kaji finished checking the motel room he had rented for bugs and waited for his guest to arrive. A few minutes later, she did, and performed her own check. Then she turned to face him.

"Was there a reason why you passed me the note requesting this meeting by kissing my hand in the middle of a crowded break room?" Mireille asked.

"I'm known throughout NERV as a notorious flirt. If people see me flirting with someone, they'll just assume it's more of the same and ignore it." He explained. Mireille slowly nodded, accepting the explanation.

"Well, then, since you wanted this meeting, would you care to explain why? I've already given you a show of good faith; it's about time that you return the favor."

That was fair enough. Kaji gave the woman an overview of what he knew about SEELE.

"So, what is the connection between this SEELE group and Les Soldats?" Mireille asked.

Les Soldats? Kaji wondered what that term meant. Oh, wait. That was the French term for 'the soldiers'. Apparently he had translated those documents he had received a little too thoroughly.

"I'm not sure. I'd never heard of Les Soldats until you gave me those documents. They could be different names for the same group, allies, operating in ignorance of each other, or enemies. I can't say for certain. Are you sure they're connected with NERV?"

Mireille nodded. "Quite certain."

"How do they operate? What are their goals? Is it possible to get the rest of that strange book that talks about them?"

Mireille snorted. "Good luck finding a complete copy of the Langumal Manuscript. It took me six months just to find those two pages, and it cost me the life of my best informant. Every known copy in the entire world has been stolen or destroyed over the past ten years."

Kaji made a mental note of that. The title of the book was known, but these Soldats were going to extraordinary lengths to keep the book out of everyone else's hands. That proved that the contents of the book were valuable – and that the Soldats could be quite dangerous when they chose to be.

"As for their goals," Mireille continued, "They claim that they want to shape global society to some ideal state. Only they know what that state is. They do this by recruiting people all around the world, in politics, organized crime, industry, sciences, and the military, and arranging for them to achieve key positions.

"They start by recruiting promising individuals, say a charismatic city assemblyman, for example. They use their existing influence to see that he gets the funding and support to run for a more important position at the regional or national level. Once there, more senior politicians, also Soldat agents, take the newcomer under their wing and see to it that the new recruit gets into some important committees. Over a few terms, the recruit gains influence in the government in his own right. That's when they ask for payback. Payback comes in the form of backing legislation that furthers the Soldat agenda and helping along the careers of new Soldat agents who have just entered politics to become key agents for the next generation.

"Their methods vary slightly depending on what field the agent is planted in, but the principle is the same. Les Soldats uses the organization's power to further the careers of its agents, and in return the agents use their positions to further the goals of the organization as a whole. They've been doing this for centuries now."

Kaji whistled. These people had a smooth operation going on. Especially if they had kept their organization secret for hundreds of years without anyone suspecting. Or had they simply managed to co-opt or eliminate those who figured it out and posed a threat?

As he considered this, his guest took the offensive and started hitting him with questions concerning SEELE and its connections to NERV. After prying a considerable amount of information from him, Mireille checked her watch and noted that it was time for her to pick up the pilots that she was assigned to guard.

Before she left, she commented: "If you're planning to look into Les Soldats, be careful. They will find out about you, and won't hesitate to kill you if you become a threat."

Kaji raised an eyebrow. "Why haven't they tried to eliminate you?"

"Who do you think was behind the attack on my apartment back in Paris? They know who I am, where I live, and exactly why I hate them. But by now they've also learned that attacking me directly is a very expensive proposition. You don't have that protection."

With that, Mireille left, leaving Kaji to consider her final words and figure out exactly how to report this to his superiors in the JDA – and hope none of them had received career boosts from a Soldat.

* * *

 

The pilots never got a chance to see how well they worked together in the new roster. Two days after Rei's disastrous accident, another Angel attack occurred.

The Twelfth Angel was a large black sphere that hovered over the city, waiting for something. Nobody was entirely certain what. After a period of observation in which the Angel made no offensive movements, Misato decided that they would take the offensive in this engagement. Selecting three map coordinates, she ordered the pilots to surround the Angel and attack with ranged weapons.

Kirika was the first to reach her position. She carefully aimed her positron rifle, and then opened a com channel to the other pilots.

"I'm in position. Ikari-san, Soryu-san, what is your status?"

Two replies came back.

"Almost there." Came Shinji's voice.

"Don't be in such a rush, Fourth Child." Asuka snapped.

Kirika remembered that her position was closer to her entry point than the others were. They had further to go, and had to swap out power cables before reaching their destinations. A few minutes later, all three pilots were ready.

"Alright," Asuka said. "Everyone fire on my mark. Drei, zwei, eins, MARK!"

Fire from three points launched at the Angel simultaneously. But just as they were about to hit, the Angel disappeared. At the same moment, something strange started happening around EVA-00's position. Everything started sinking into the ground for no reason – including the Evangelion.

"Kirika, get out of there!" Misato shouted.

Kirika started to run. But every step she took went deeper into the invisible sinkhole, which reduced the forward distance achieved by the step that followed it. It quickly became obvious that she wasn't going to make it to the edge of the sinking area.

"Imouto!" Shinji cried. He jettisoned his power cable and started to run towards his sister.

"What are you doing, Shinji? Get out of there!" Misato demanded.

Shinji ignored her and kept running.

"Shinji, get clear of the Angel, now! That's an order!"

Shinji continued to ignore Misato and reached the edge of the sinking area. Reaching out, he grabbed the arm of the struggling Unit 00 and started pulling it out. He succeeded in pulling Kirika out, but ended up losing his balance in the process. EVA-01 fell into the sinkhole, quickly disappearing. After it vanished, the black sphere of the Angel reappeared over the center of the sinking area, and the sinking stopped. Everything that had been partially embedded in that area had been sliced through with an impossibly clean cut, leaving no evidence of the portions of the objects that had sunk beneath the street level.

* * *

 

Kirika sat by herself, thinking of what had just happened. Shinji had just sacrificed himself to save her. In her entire life, the only person to have ever placed themselves into peril for her sake before this day was Mireille.

Kirika looked down at her hands. She had yet to figure out if the black gloves of her plug suit were a subtle message from Ritsuko that she knew about Noir, or just a coincidence. But there was one person in NERV who she knew could not possibly be involved with Les Soldats now – Shinji.

Shinji had gone against orders to save her. From personal experience with Mireille's uncle, Kirika knew full well that if a Soldat agent was ordered to abandon their family to death, he or she would do so. To refuse would simply cause them to join their families in death. Though that might explain what Ritsuko was setting up at the moment. Dropping a thousand nukes on someone's head simultaneously might be the most extreme execution in history, but it would get the job done. And she would have to participate in the execution, or risk dooming every person on the planet.

All Shinji had wanted was to be with his sister. And Kirika had pushed him away, fearing that it was all some kind of trap. She hadn't even been able to bring herself to address him by his first name. Now she knew that what Shinji had been offering was genuine, but it was too late to do anything about it.

Kirika felt like the biggest fool in the world.

* * *

 

Even with power expenditures cut to an absolute minimum, the emergency batteries of an Evangelion couldn't hold out forever. Shinji could attest to that, as he was seeing it happen.

The filtration system was starting to fail, causing the oxygen level in the LCL to slowly drop. The heaters were also failing. Shinji was slowly drowning and freezing to death at the same time, and he had no idea which would get to him first, the CO2 rich LCL depriving his brain of oxygen or the slowly dropping temperature.

How long had he been stuck in this flooded metal tube? He could probably figure it out quickly enough by checking the digital watch built into his plug suit, but it seemed like he had been trapped for weeks from his highly subjective viewpoint. It wasn't as if there was anything to do in a dimly lit capsule with all computer functions not related to life support shut down. He was going to die. If rescue was going to come, it would have arrived by now. At least he had managed to protect his sister one last time. Kirika was safe. That was what mattered.

It bothered Shinji that he still knew barely anything about the person his sister had become. In the months since they had been reunited, she had never addressed him by his given name, only as Ikari-san. He knew nothing about what hobbies she might have, what friends she had had other than her guardian, her life between the point when she lost her memory and the point when she came to Tokyo-3, or anything else for that matter. It wasn't that she was rejecting his attempts to get closer to her, it was more like she was ignoring them completely.

Why was she acting like that? He knew that she wanted to remember her past, the fact that she had taken that photograph proved that. So why did she act like that? What could bring her to avoid someone who wanted to help her regain something she wanted?

Whatever was holding her back, Shinji wanted to help her with it. After being separated from his little sister for ten years, it was the least he could do for her. But he couldn't do anything while he was trapped in this strange void the Angel had created.

Shinji didn't want to die. He still had things to do. His sister still needed him, and after ten years of forced separation, he did not intend to fail her. But he didn't know how he was supposed to escape from his current situation. He wished that someone, anyone, could help him, somehow.

Through the blurry unfiltered LCL, Shinji thought he saw something. He shrugged it aside as a hallucination due to the cold and lack of clean air. But the fuzzy image kept approaching, and then slowly embraced him. Though he couldn't make out any features of the person who had come to him, he somehow recognized her anyway, and knew that his prayer had been answered.

"Kaa-san?" He whispered.

* * *

 

The clock slowly ticked down to the planned assault time. Two Evangelions were positioned on either side of the Sea of Dirac, readying their AT fields. In a few minutes, it would rain N2 mines, and the combined explosions would theoretically destroy the Angel and expel the matter that it had absorbed. The theory was much thinner on whether or not living matter that had been trapped inside, such as a young pilot of EVA-01, would survive this process.

But before the planes carrying the mines arrived, a miracle happened. A bulge formed on the side of the sphere that was the true Angel's shadow. As the bulge swelled, cracks started forming in the Sea of Dirac beneath it. Finally, the bulge started to tear, and the arm of EVA-01 burst out of it. The berserk Evangelion tore open a breach in the floating sphere, and then leaped out of it, drenched in the blood of the Angel. Then it crashed to the ground, shutting down as the Angel's actual body shattered into pieces.

As calls were sent out to cancel the bombing run, a medical team rushed to the fallen Evangelion. The entry plug was quickly extracted from Unit 01's body, and the pilot was removed and rushed to an ambulance, where treatment was immediately begun for hypothermia and oxygen deprivation.

* * *

 

Shinji awoke to find himself once again in the NERV hospital. Sniffing, he found that he still smelled of blood. He didn't realize that he had commented on that out loud until he heard a reply.

"The nurses here use the wrong kind of soap. I know something that can get any kind of smell out." Kirika said.

Shinji turned to see his sister sitting beside the bed. Judging by the schoolbooks and completed assignments by her chair, and the empty meal tray, she had been there for some time.

"Kirika… are you…" He said.

She nodded. "I'm fine. Thank you, Shinji."

Shinji smiled. Kirika had used his first name. The hours-long ordeal in the entry plug, the aches he felt now, the dressing down for disobeying orders he was likely to get in the future, they didn't matter.

The reward he had received was worth it.

* * *

 

After being released from the hospital, Shinji asked Misato to take him and Kirika to the place she showed him after he had fought the Third Angel. They arrived there around the time that Ritsuko's team finished securing what was salvageable of the Twelfth Angel after Unit 01 was done with it. And so Kirika got to see Tokyo-3 shifting between fortress and city modes from the outside for the first time.

The view from that small park was impressive even at normal times. Watching an entire city slowly rise from the ground as one looked out over the valley was a truly breathtaking sight.

For the first time since Milosh's murder, Kirika wished that she had brought her sketchpad with her.

* * *

 

Chloe worked her way through the kata, gliding through the training dummies and throwing knives at high speed. When she finished, she examined the dummies critically. Every single knife was embedded in a point that would have been lethal within seconds had they been actual people. It had taken weeks of myostimulation treatments and training, but she was once again in top condition.

The other effects of her illness had lingered. Her hair and eye color had never returned to normal. She had eventually given up and used dye and tinted contacts to return them to their original appearance. That option wasn't available for her skin, unfortunately. Several sessions in a tanning bed had left her skin just as pale as it had been before the treatments. It seemed that her unnatural paleness would be staying.

Far more worrying to her were the dreams she had been having since she had woken up in the hospital. They always depicted her at about the age she was when she first met Kirika. In the dreams, she was always with a group of people she didn't know, but felt that she should know for some reason. The dreams mainly focused on a young girl with red hair and blue eyes. Who were these people? Who was the girl? Why did they all seem so familiar? These questions kept coming to her mind, but she didn't know the answers.

As Chloe started retrieving her knives, a man entered the practice room. Chloe recognized him as a senior leader of Les Soldats and set aside her task to greet her visitor.

"Mr. Breffort." She said.

"Hello, Chloe. I'm glad to see that you've recovered." He answered.

"Thank you, sir."

"I'm afraid that I'm here to deliver some bad news. While you were ill, the manor house where you were raised and trained was attacked. There were no survivors."

The manor, attacked? No survivors? Did that mean that Altena was… dead?

"Was… Altena…"

Breffort nodded. "She was there at the time of the attack."

"Who… Who…"

Breffort handed her something. "The killers accidentally left this behind. You have my condolences." With that, he left.

Chloe wept. Altena was dead. Her leader, her mentor, her mother was gone. Her entire life had been centered on helping Altena achieve her dream of restoring Les Soldats to its original state. What would she do with her life now? Who had done this? Chloe looked at the item in her hand, the sole clue to the identity of Altena's killer and gasped.

The object in her hand was a silver pocketwatch. The watch was dented, as if it had been dropped at some point. On the cover of the watch was engraved the image of two kneeling women saluting each other with swords – the symbolic representation of Noir. A tune started playing when she opened the watch to look at the cracked glass covering the watch hands. She recognized this watch. The watch belonged to Kirika.

How could Kirika do this? How could she betray Les Soldats, betray Altena, betray her like this? Then Chloe realized exactly how this could have happened.

Mireille. She had hated Les Soldats since the moment she learned that they had ordered the death of her parents as punishment for defying them. She and Kirika had been living together ever since the trials had begun. Without Chloe being available to counter her influence, she must have succeeded in poisoning Kirika's mind against the people that had raised and trained her.

Chloe knew what she had to do. Altena had always said that if love could destroy, then surely hatred could save. It was time to test that theory. Chloe would see to it that her hatred of Mireille would enable her to save Kirika. To destroy the interfering bitch that had turned Kirika against her own people and get her partner back.

As Chloe's left hand clenched the watch, her right hand grabbed a knife and threw it. The knife struck the head of a training dummy between the eyes, and embedded itself into the dummy up to the hilt.

"You will pay for this, Mireille Bouquet." She snarled.

* * *

 

Breffort smiled to himself as he left the room. His reborn Noir was coming along quite nicely. The information he had just passed on would get her into a state where he could get her to eliminate the renegade Noir at a time of his choosing. It would also get her in the habit of taking orders from him instead of the late Altena. Even if tradition called for two Noir, having control of one Noir, especially one who could be resurrected an indefinite number of times, would help solidify his control of Les Soldats nicely.

Dr Descroix approached him. "Sir, I think there is something you should see."

"What is it, Doctor?"

Descroix produced two photographs. "This is what the original Chloe looked like, and this is what the new Chloe looks like without cosmetic alterations."

Breffort looked at the photos, noting the change in hair, eye and skin color.

"What is your point, Doctor?"

Descroix produced two new photographs. "This is a picture of Kirika Yumura, Evangelion pilot and renegade Noir. The second photograph is of Rei Ayanami, another Evangelion pilot. One who apparently appeared out of nowhere four years ago."

Apart from the change in hair, eye and skin color, the resemblance between the two individuals was considerable. Too considerable, when one took into account the fact that according to intelligence that Breffort had received, Kirika Yumura had once been Kirika Ikari, daughter of Gendo Ikari, former commander of GEHIRN and current commander of NERV, the organizations that had developed the technology that had been used to create the new Chloe.

Breffort thanked the doctor and headed back to his office, still looking over the pictures. There was only one possible conclusion – Ikari was holding out on him. Whether he was doing this to aid the group he was supposed to be infiltrating or to further his own goals was unknown, but he was definitely withholding information from his superiors.

Breffort knew there was only one punishment for betrayal – death. Unfortunately, there were complications. Gendo Ikari rarely left the underground fortress that was NERV HQ. When he did, it was to travel to another highly secure facility. The only plants he had in Tokyo-3 other than Ikari didn't have assassination skills. In addition to this, Breffort wasn't sure that he could control the selection of Gendo's replacement if he died. The information from Ikari had been shown to be at least partially tainted, but it was the only source that he had. On the other hand, sparing Ikari would indicate that treason was acceptable. That could spell the end of Les Soldats.

Breffort needed more information. He needed to know exactly what Ikari was up to. He then needed to respond in a way that the influence of Les Soldats was increased, or at least in a way that the influence of Keele's group was decreased. Then and only then would Ikari die. He knew just the person to do the job, too. And getting her in position to do it would also position her to eliminate two other threats to his plans…

Perhaps he should start by sending Ikari a message. Something that would get his attention and disrupt his plans at least slightly. What could he do…

Breffort took another look at the pictures, and then started to laugh.

* * *

 

A/N: To those who didn't get the joke that Kaji thinks he found, 'Noir' is the French word for black, while in government parlance, 'black' refers to something that is so classified that it doesn't officially exist.

While Chloe has also gone into battle to help Kirika, these incidents were during the trials. As such, they were partially done because Altena ordered her to, not just because Chloe wanted to help Kirika. So Kirika isn't counting those. Chloe probably would place herself in mortal danger to help Kirika even without orders though.

Mireille and Kirika's normal firing range is a bull's-eye chalked onto the wall of a sewer tunnel. They have to have something capable of getting rid of strong and unpleasant odors, both on themselves and their clothing, or everyone they ran into in Paris would notice that they smelled of sewage on a regular basis.

Before anyone asks, Chloe will not become a pilot. Shinji might be willing to share Unit 01 with his sister, but I doubt Asuka would be willing to share Unit 02 with anybody unless she absolutely had to.


	12. The Third Sapling

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 12

The Third Sapling

Time passed. While Rei "recovered from her injuries", the other three pilots were put through joint training exercises. After the events that happened during the attacks of the Eleventh and Twelfth Angels, the personality conflicts between the pilots had been reduced considerably. As a result of this, Misato was finally able to get an actual three-pilot unit together, rather than a two-pilot unit with an extra or three pilots by themselves.

The joint training between the three pilots ended up extending to activities other than piloting. Asuka had approached Kirika and offered to teach her to swim. Once it was revealed that Shinji couldn't swim either, he was dragged into the lessons as well. While neither sibling was likely to reach the skill level necessary to get a SCUBA certification like Asuka's in the near future, Asuka was able to get her colleagues to the point where they could keep themselves afloat.

In return, Kirika trained the other two in combat. Shinji took to the advanced marksmanship training that his sister offered well. Asuka appreciated the thought of getting extra close combat training; she did have problems with the lessons themselves. Most of them stemmed from the fact that the Fourth Child could take her down without breaking a sweat. Asuka wasn't very fond of losing, and she ended up losing without landing a single return blow nine times out of ten. And the tenth time she still lost. At least Asuka could salve her ego with the fact that Kirika couldn't fight at her full capacity in an EVA the way she could.

As for Kirika, she had once again taken up her old hobby of painting. In her free time, she had acquired a paint set and some canvas and was in the process of creating two landscapes: One of the interior of the GeoFront as viewed from the top of one of the entry points, and one of Tokyo-3 as seen from the park that overlooked the entire city at sunset. Those that had seen the works in progress were of the opinion that they were good enough to hang on the wall of a private residence, but were hardly museum quality. Section 2 grumbled about the need to guard the Fourth Child at night while Mireille guarded the Second and Third Children at their apartment. Privately (and accurately), Asuka was of the opinion that the guards weren't needed: Should anyone try to attack Kirika, she would probably find a way to kill the attacker with her paintbrushes.

That was the state of things when the anniversary of Yui Ikari's death came around.

* * *

Kirika looked around the enormous graveyard. The graveyards she had seen in Europe were nothing like this one. The graves there tended to be of various sizes and shapes, with each tombstone a unique creation, some of them just giving a minimal description of the dead person, while others gave a brief description of the life that the deceased had lived. The variety gave the graveyards a sense of character, reinforced by the winding paths crisscrossing across the grounds.

This graveyard had no character beyond bleak uniformity. In every direction, thousands of identical black slabs were laid out in perfect rows. The only color anywhere lied in the flowers that were placed in front of random tombstones across the field. The markers were almost perfectly identical, as if they were all mass-produced in some factory. The only difference between one slab and the next was the name and dates engraved upon them. And that was all that was engraved on any of them. It was as if the end result of any life was to have that life reduced to those two basic facts, which would then be carefully filed in this place and then be forgotten. Even from the perspective of someone whose life had been centered on the concept of death, it was a depressing thought. The marker she stood in front of decreed that the only thing one needed to know about her late mother was:

**Ikari, Yui**

**1977-2004**

Such limited information didn't answer any of the questions that Kirika had about her. What kind of person was she? How had she died? And did she participate – either by action or deliberate inaction – in turning Kirika over to Altena? Kirika knew that at least one of her parents was involved in that, but she didn't know which one – or if it was both.

A helicopter landed in the distance. Commander Ikari exited the helicopter and approached the grave where Kirika and Shinji waited. The Commander addressed Shinji.

"It's been three years since the two of us have been here together, hasn't it?" He asked.

"And the first time all three of us have ever been here together." Shinji responded.

"Indeed."

"I can no longer remember her face."

"Neither can I." Kirika added. Unlike the implied lie that Kirika had given Shinji about her amnesia (She had never revealed that she had recovered most of her memories), that was the truth. Whenever Kirika thought of 'Mother', the only image that came to mind was the woman who taught Kirika to kill – and who Kirika knocked into a lava pit.

"I've tried looking, but I haven't been able to find a picture of her anywhere." Shinji continued.

"I destroyed them." Gendo said. "Images are unimportant. My memories of her remain, and that is what matters."

That might be the case for a man who was in his late thirties at the time of his wife's death, but it was hardly the case for children who were four at the time. Kirika had heard that the Commander was far from the most considerate man in NERV. That rumor was apparently quite true. A few minutes passed in silence, and then the Commander turned and headed back to the helicopter.

"Shinji?" Kirika asked. "How did she die?"

Shinji sighed. "Kaa-san was working on some experiment. She had taken us to work that day to show it to us. She walked into some strange device. Something went wrong… and she never came out."

Kirika flinched. She knew exactly what being a witness or near witness to the death of someone important could do to a person. Mireille had been the one to discover that her family had been killed. At the time she found the bodies, Odette's musical pocketwatch was still playing from where it dropped on the ground. Whenever Kirika could opened her watch – which, as a close replica of Odette's, played the same tune – Mireille's mind flashed back to that day. After a while, Kirika got in the habit of getting the time from Mireille's watch whenever they were together, to spare her partner the memories.

Shinji continued. "Three weeks after that, the Commander sent me to live with an uncle. You stayed behind. When I asked why, he said that he had a use for you, but not me. He never said what that use was. When he had me come to Tokyo-3, I thought that you'd still be with him."

Kirika felt a darker part of herself wakening when she heard that. A use for her, that Shinji had no part in? She had a pretty good idea as to what use that might be. She hadn't been turned over to Altena until after her mother died. That meant that regardless of whether or not she was a Soldat, she had had no say in turning over her child. This meant that all blame for that lay with the surviving parent. Kirika's gaze locked onto the retreating form of Gendo Ikari.

* * *

Shinji was glad that his sister had come with him to visit their mother's grave. It had been a yearly ritual for him for the past decade, even if the Commander didn't always show up to pay his respects to his wife's grave. This was the first time that Kirika had been able to attend.

Shinji wasn't all that surprised when she asked him about their mother's death. Given her inability to remember anything else about her, it wasn't surprising that Kirika would be curious about that. And even though Shinji had trouble remembering anything else about his mother due to his extreme youth at the time she died, that day was indelibly burned into his mind, no matter how much he wished otherwise.

What he wasn't expecting was Kirika's reaction when he took the story forward to their separation. When he got to the point about her being useful when he was not, Kirika's eyes began staring at the Commander's back. But it wasn't that which got Shinji's attention. It was the expression on Kirika's face.

For a moment, Shinji thought of comparing it to that of a predator marking its prey. But then he realized that was inaccurate. A predator would show more emotion. Kirika's face showed no emotion at all, just a focused sense of purpose emanating from her cold, seemingly lifeless eyes. No, this wasn't the face of a predator. This was the face of an implacable force of nature, promising certain doom upon anything that stood in its way.

Shinji hadn't wanted to believe Asuka's story about how Kirika had calmly taken out a group of assassins before Section 2 even noticed they were there. But seeing his sister like this, he realized that it was very true. He wondered what could possibly have turned her into someone who could be like that.

* * *

Chloe was packing for her first mission since her illness. This mission was unusual for her. Normally she arrived at her destination, killed her target, and then went on her way. She rarely stayed at the place where she worked for more than a few days, so it was unusual for anyone there to get a chance to get to know her well enough to be able to describe her in any detail, and she was generally gone from the area before any search for the killer of her target could get started.

This time was different. Apparently, it was likely that she would be needed for multiple jobs in the Tokyo-3 area over a prolonged period of time, so she would need to create and maintain an actual identity there. Rather than being a wraith that simply passed through, she would have to be an actual person, with a fixed address. This would lead to having neighbors who might notice her comings and goings. In addition, nobody had been able to come up with a convincing reason for a 14 year old girl to travel by herself to Tokyo-3 and not be able to attend school. So she would end up with a sizable portion of her time constrained by a class schedule, and end up with a second group of people who might be able to recognize her should she ever be caught on film. And while Les Soldats could make any evidence that might turn up against her vanish in the long run, in the short term having policemen after her would be a serious inconvenience. She doubted that any of them could capture her, but having to hide would prevent her from getting any work done, and killing any cop who tried to question her would draw far too much attention to herself.

But the mission had its advantages as well. Kirika and Mireille were also in Tokyo-3. So Chloe would have all the time she needed to redeem her former partner. And while she was not allowed to kill Mireille at this time for fear of compromising her primary mission, there was nothing keeping her from planning a strike to eliminate her enemy… and enacting it on her way out of town once the mission was over.

But as she packed, Chloe realized that one of her possessions was missing. No matter how hard she tried, she could not find the fork that she had gotten from Kirika in Paris anywhere.

That fork was the only physical tie that Chloe had to the girl of her dreams. She had carefully held on to it as a symbol of the hope that they would be together again someday. It was the single most important physical possession that Chloe owned. But the only other person to have the slightest inkling of what that simple utensil meant to her was Altena, who was dead. In all likelihood, some member of the hospital staff found it on her, didn't know why it was there, and tossed it in either a silverware drawer or a trash can. The fork was likely gone forever.

Her packing was interrupted by a technician. Apparently, the people working on creating the identity she would be living under wanted her to come up with a last name. There was one that kept popping up in the back of her mind, so she decided to use that.

"Langley".

* * *

It was a rainy day in Tokyo-3. Actually, it was a total downpour. Weather reports claimed that it would stop in the early afternoon, but that didn't help anyone who had to walk to school in the morning. The various students squelched their way through the storm and hurried indoors. Once they made it indoors, they all removed and hung up their soaked raincoats quickly so that they could begin the process of drying off that much sooner.

As Kirika made her way to her homeroom, she saw something unusual and froze. One student wasn't wearing a raincoat. She was wearing a dark green cloak. A cloak with a very familiar cut and of a very familiar shade of green.

"What's wrong Kirika?" Shinji asked.

Kirika shook her head. It couldn't be her. Chloe was dead and had been for months. It was just a coincidence.

"It's nothing. I just saw something that reminded me of someone I once knew." She replied.

"Who?"

Explaining the whole story about her and Chloe would take too long, and touch on things that Kirika did not want to reveal. She decided to give a highly simplified version.

"Someone I once considered a friend."

* * *

"Stand! Bow! Sit!" Hikari called out.

The class obeyed the representative's orders. The entire class was present for the first time in weeks, as Rei had finally been released from the NERV hospital. The class was about to get a little larger.

"All right class, we have a new student who transferred in today." The teacher announced. With that, a girl with very dark red hair entered the room.

"Hello. My name is Chloe Langley." She said.

Nobody noticed the way Kirika stiffened, because Asuka's reaction was much more impressive.

" _CHLOE?"_ She shrieked, jumping out of her seat.

Chloe looked at the red-haired girl that stormed towards her. She looked like an older version of the girl that appeared in her dreams. Given that those dreams were all about her early childhood, it was entirely possible that this was that girl, now grown.

"Where have you been all these years, Chloe? Why haven't you kept in touch with me like you promised?" The girl demanded in German.

This person knew her? Delving into the foggy depths of her memories, Chloe came up with a name that might match the girl.

"A-Asuka?" She asked hesitantly.

"How nice of you to remember me, cousin. Of course, it would have been nicer if you hadn't taken _ten years_ to do it."

Hoping to deflect her apparent relative away from questions concerning what she had been up to since the separation that she couldn't remember, Chloe tried to bring in some harmless small talk.

"How's your mother?"

"She's _dead_. She died three months after you moved. Of course, you would have known that if you had called. Or written. Or let me know your new address so I could write you. What were you doing that kept you so busy that you couldn't contact your family _once_ in all these years?"

The conversation went downhill from there.

* * *

Kirika had never been one for recreational reading. In fact, if a book was not something that she had been instructed to read, or on a topic that was relevant to some goal she had set out to achieve at some point, the odds that she had read it were pretty much zero. As such, she had virtually no knowledge of the common fiction genre known as the horror novel. But had she that knowledge, she would undoubtedly have thought that she was in one. Because there were two people in her classroom that had apparently come back from the dead.

Rei Ayanami had been pummeled to death in a training accident, receiving a broken neck and an indeterminate number of potentially serious internal injuries. By rights, the only way she could have survived would have left her paralyzed from the neck down. But here she was, perfectly unharmed.

Chloe 'Langley' had been stabbed through the heart. She had effectively died in Kirika's arms, having landed there after being stabbed. Unlike Rei, there was no possibility for a miraculous medical technique repairing the damage. Kirika had killed Chloe personally. She had attended her funeral, such as it was. As one of the world's premier assassins, she knew a corpse when she saw one. Chloe had definitely been dead. Her reappearance, alive and apparently related to one of her coworkers, was very confusing.

And what was she to do about Chloe's return? At one point, Kirika had considered her to be a friend. She was one of the few people in the world to truly know her. After the Final Guidance, Kirika learned that she was also the only friend she'd ever had for most of her life. Not that the person she had been back then had ever really understood what friendship meant.

That friendship had shattered the moment that Chloe tried to kill Mireille. With that act, Chloe had shown herself to be a faithful Soldat, one who considered all personal considerations, such as the wishes of a friend, to be subordinate to her orders to ensure that only two Saplings survive the final trial. As much as Kirika would have liked to have reclaimed her former friend, she knew that Chloe could not be trusted.

Looking at her terminal, she saw that since the 'discussion' between Asuka and Chloe was preventing the teacher from starting the class, the students were spending their reprieve from the endless purgatory of Second Impact lectures to have a massive chat room session. The topic in question was the connection between Asuka and Chloe. Most of what was being speculated about was totally wrong, as the conversation was being held in German, and Kirika was the only other person in the room who knew that language.

Kirika entered the chat room and started providing the class a running translation. Hopefully that would keep her mind off of wondering what was going on in this increasingly strange city.

* * *

By the time Asuka finally calmed down, there were only five minutes left in the period. The teacher tried getting things back on topic, but the class as a whole found the translation of that impressive diatribe that the German had produced far more interesting than a monologue about Second Impact. On the whole, the students had learned more about Asuka in that forty-five minute period than they had in the entire time she had lived in Japan.

The next class was gym. Because of the rain, it had to be held indoors. As there hadn't been a gym class first period and the teacher had spent the time doing paperwork in his office, the gym was locked. When the doors were unlocked, the gym was revealed to be a mess. Apparently, the kendo team had forgotten to put away their gear before locking up the evening before. Muttering to himself about having a word with the team captain when his class happened next period, he instructed the class to clear away the mess.

Chloe headed to a pair of shinai that were lying on the floor. Picking them up, she carefully checked the balance of each. Then she threw one to Kirika. The instant Kirika caught it, Chloe charged, her own shinai at the ready.

Kirika blocked the blow, and then slashed at Chloe's knees. Chloe jumped over the blow, and then swung at Kirika's head. When Kirika blocked the strike, Chloe punched the other girl in the face with the hilt of the practice sword.

The watchers gasped at that exchange. Attacking an opponent's legs was an illegal move in kendo. So was attacking with the hilt. But this wasn't a kendo match. This was a duel in the true sense of the word, where there was only one rule: win.

The two combatants slowly circled each other, looking for an opening. Kirika found one first. Her foot slid into a discarded helm and threw it at Chloe with a sudden snap kick. Chloe darted to the side and advanced while the people watching from behind her ducked for cover. One running slash was blocked, then Chloe kept on running past, evading a return cut. As Kirika gave chase, the reason for that move became apparent. Chloe reached a corner of the gym, then ran onto the wall, her momentum enabling her to keep moving to the adjacent wall, then spring off of it, attacking Kirika from the flank. Kirika rolled backwards, falling below the strike, and threw Chloe across the room. Chloe landed on her back, and smoothly rolled to her feet. The battle was rejoined.

The two rained blows upon each other continuously, neither managing to land a hit with their shinai. Kirika was forced to duck under a brutal swing at neck level, countering it with a backwards somersault that spun her weapon along the axis of rotation. Chloe was outflanked and nearly struck from behind, but she flipped over her opponent and would have landed a strike on Kirika's neck had a sweep kick not taken her feet out from under her. Back and forth the battle went, with neither opponent able to keep an advantage for long.

Finally, Chloe made a mistake. It was only a minor mistake, which would have been unimportant had she faced a lesser opponent. After a downward strike that had been dodged, she was a trifle too slow in recovering her stance. Kirika struck, hitting the shinai in the hilt. The weapon was knocked from Chloe's hand. Kirika spun, her sword aiming for Chloe's throat.

* * *

Asuka had known that Kirika was good for some time. Killing seven people in a matter of seconds with found materials will prove that. This was reinforced by the way she had mopped the training room floor with Asuka several times a week for the past month. But she hadn't expected anything like this. Watching an expert take out a weaker opponent without any effort was impressive, but it wasn't a true demonstration of skill. A true demonstration comes when an expert faces an equal. Such was the case here.

Kirika and Chloe's duel had demonstrated combat skills that Asuka had never even dreamed of attaining. She hadn't thought them possible outside of a movie (Of course, since Kensuke had pulled out his camera by the third strike, it arguably was a movie – now).

The fight was also brutal. Had any of the blows launched been made with a real weapon, they would have been either lethal or crippling if they connected. Yet despite this, Chloe was smiling throughout the entire battle. Finally, Kirika knocked Chloe's shinai from her hand. Then she brought her weapon in to strike Chloe's throat.

While it was a lot harder to do permanent damage to somebody with a shinai than it is with a real sword or a bokken, that didn't make it impossible. And given the way that Kirika fought, there was a good chance that she knew how to do it. Chloe had started the fight, and given how many times Kirika had had to fight for her life, she would likely kill her attacker on pure instinct. While Asuka was still angry about Chloe's lack of communication over the years, she didn't want her dead. A cry escaped her throat as the bamboo blade stopped a mere centimeter away from Chloe's unguarded throat.

Chloe's reaction was not what Asuka expected.

"I never could best you with the sword." She reminisced fondly.

"Remember that." Kirika responded coldly.

"What the heck was that?" Demanded the teacher. "Why were you attacking a fellow student?"

"Attacking? That wasn't a fight, teacher. That was just a light spar. Kirika and I have been sparring at a higher level than that for years." Chloe said. The entire class looked at her like she had grown a second head.

"Light? _Light?_ If that was light sparring, then what do you call a higher level than that?"

"Normally we use real swords."

The entire class gawked at statement. The image of the past five minutes being redone using actual weapons flashed through their minds. All thoughts of punishing Chloe for starting a fight vanished from the teacher's head as he made a strange noise, and then passed out.

* * *

As two students carried the teacher to the nurse's office, the class started to gossip. The revelation that one of the pilots considered a no-holds-barred kendo match with real swords to be a normal workout made them speculate that maybe the other pilots were trained like that as well. That led to speculation as to the nature of the 'training accidents' that had caused Rei to be hospitalized on two separate occasions since the Angels started appearing. While this went on, Shinji noticed the other thing that Chloe had let slip.

"How long have you two known each other?" He asked.

"One year" "Ten years" Came the contradictory responses.

That got the attention of the class. The newcomer had known Kirika before her amnesia. And wherever it was that the two had vanished to in their ten year separations from their relatives in the class, they had apparently gone there together.

* * *

The class had divided into two groups. One group was clearing away the kendo gear, while the other group (The larger one) gossiped about everything that had happened that morning. While this was going on, Shinji approached Chloe.

"You knew my sister when she was younger?" He asked.

"You're Kirika's brother?" She responded.

He nodded. "Didn't she ever speak of me?"

"No. Not once. In all the years we knew each other, I don't think we had ever talked about our families. The topic never came up." That was actually rather strange, now that she thought about it.

Shinji looked disappointed at that. Chloe could sympathize. Encountering Kirika in Paris and being treated as a total stranger had been painful for her. She could imagine what he must be feeling to learn that he had apparently been forgotten during the years they'd been apart. She put a comforting had on his shoulder.

"What was she like back then?" Shinji asked a few minutes later.

"Magnificent." Chloe answered wistfully. "She was probably the most focused and dedicated person I've ever met. Once she made up her mind to get something done, the only way to stop her was to do it yourself before she could. I've been trying to live up to the standard that she set my entire life."

The two spent the remainder of the period reminiscing about the girl who had become a central figure in both their lives.

* * *

Kaji had been busy. Careful examination of the public portions of his commanding officer's record had revealed that while the man had been involved in politicking for career boosts on occasion (Reaching flag rank in any military organization without the endorsement of at least one person who already had it was extremely difficult), he had never obtained any long-term patron looking after his career. The boosts in question all appeared to be the result of actions already taken that brought benefit to the individuals giving the career boosts. That didn't match the Soldat concept of providing favors and expecting payback later.

Fairly certain that the head of the JDA wasn't compromised by Les Soldats, he had sent in a report describing what he had learned of the organization. The revelation that there were two conspiracies involved with NERV was not one that brought much joy to Japan's intelligence services. Even more consternation was brought about when Mireille informed Kaji that Gendo Ikari had been confirmed to be a Soldat. Kaji had already known that Gendo was a SEELE agent. But was he a Soldat mole in SEELE, a SEELE mole in Les Soldats, or planning to betray them both?

JDA Intelligence was creating an entire new section to investigate the new conspiracy. That section had not been reported to the Diet. There was no way to tell how many members of the Diet were compromised, given the level of corruption there. In the meantime, Kaji was continuing to investigate NERV, trying to find out the nature of the schemes of either group trying to pull the strings there.

That was what had brought him and Mireille to the deepest subbasement of Terminal Dogma. He was about to open the sealed entrance using a forged passkey when he heard a pistol being cocked.

"I thought you two were up to something." Misato said. "Kaji wouldn't normally spend so much time flirting with a woman ten years his junior."

Kaji knew that with Misato having the drop on them, trying to fight without a distraction to buy them a bit of time was futile. So he tried a different tactic.

"Misato," He began, "Have you even wondered why of all the places in the world, the Angels always attack here? The only Angel that wasn't proven to be trying to reach Tokyo-3 was the 6th, and that could have been on its way here when it ran into the Pacific Fleet. Why do all the Angels attack the only place in the world that is equipped to defend against them?"

"It's the Evangelions. The Angels are attracted to them."

"Misato, EVA-02 was in Germany when the Angel attacks began, and no Angels have attacked Hamburg. There are currently eleven Evangelion units in various states of construction in places around the world other than Tokyo-3. If the Angels were after the Evangelions, they could have attacked any of the NERV facilities building them. No, Misato, the Angels are coming here because they're looking for something. And that something is this." With that, he swiped the card through the reader.

The massive doors opened. Inside, there was an enormous cross. Nailed to the cross was a gigantic humanoid figure whose legs were missing. A gigantic spear, the size of a small warship, was embedded in its side. Orange fluid oozed out of the nail and spear wounds, flowing into a large pool at the base.

The three intruders entered the room.

"What is this?"

"An Angel. NERV has been using it to create the Evangelions. And for some reason the other Angels are seeking this one out."

"Why?"

"Why are the Angels looking for this one? Or why is NERV doing this? I don't know the answer to either of these. But I intend to find out."

The three stood in silence, staring at the monstrosity. At the same time as they did this, Kirika entered a restroom, pulled out her cellphone, and tried to contact Mireille to tell her about Chloe's return. Unfortunately, due to Mireille's location in the most heavily shielded point of the GeoFront, the call was lost.

* * *

The sky was still gloomy, but it was no longer raining. Students filed out of the school, carefully avoiding all the puddles that formed during the day.

Mireille walked to the school gate, ready to pick up her charges. She saw a fourth person walking close to the group she was to escort. When the group was close enough that she could make out who it was, all the color drained from her face.

"Hello, Mireille." Chloe said. "It's been a long time."

Mireille looked at the girl who had nearly killed her – and by rights should be dead.

"A very long time indeed." She replied. "You're looking rather pale."

"I've been ill."

"I had heard. Your doctor must be very good. When I left France, your prognosis was terminal."

From the tone of Mireille's voice, it was rather obvious that she'd been hoping that Chloe would die. Whatever had passed between the two in the past, it was clear that the two didn't like each other.

"Do you two know each other?" Asuka asked.

"Oh, yes, cousin." Chloe responded. "Our paths have crossed a few times over the past year.

"By the way, Kirika, I believe you dropped this the last time you visited our teacher." Chloe produced a silver pocketwatch from her bookbag and gave it to the other girl. "Now I'm afraid I must be going. I still haven't finished setting up my apartment."

With that, Chloe left, leaving behind a large number of witnesses to the conversation who immediately began churning the school rumor mill even more rapidly than before.

* * *

As Chloe headed down the street, she considered her own actions during the day. Why was it that she had never even thought of her cousin before running into her today? How was it that she and Kirika could spend nine years together and never once discuss their families at all? What in the world had gotten into her to have a practice match with Kirika in front of the entire class? And to reveal the full extent of the matches the two had had in the past? All that had accomplished was to ensure that she stood out in the eyes of her classmates, when standing out was the last thing she wanted.

What was wrong with her? Before her illness, she had always been calm, reserved. The only people to ever see her otherwise were Kirika and Altena. She would never have shown her combat abilities in front of anyone who wasn't either an ally or somebody she planned to use them on a year ago. What had happened to make her do something that reckless? It was almost as if she was acting like a totally different person at times.

A car drove by her, running through a large puddle. As she tried to dodge the worst of the splash, the water flew towards her and then stopped; crashing into an invisible wall and running down the wall towards the sidewalk. Having just walked through the point where that wall had appeared, Chloe knew that it hadn't been there a moment before. One more question to ask: What had just happened?

Ten minutes after Chloe had left the area, a team of NERV researchers appeared to investigate the AT field that had spontaneously formed for half a second and then disappeared without any explanation.

* * *

A light on Gendo's telephone went on. The Commander of NERV pushed a button.

"What is it?" He asked.

His secretary's voice came through the line. "The First Child wishes to speak with you, Sir."

"Send her in."

Rei entered the office and addressed the Commander.

"There is a new student in our class."

"And why should this concern me?"

"The new student is named Chloe Langley. She is apparently a cousin of Pilot Soryu, who she had not been in contact with for ten years. She is also an acquaintance of Pilot Yumura, with their relationship going back approximately the same amount of time as the separation between her and Soryu."

Gendo frowned. If this girl was connected to his daughter from that time period, then it was highly probable that she was also a Soldat. He hadn't known that the Second Child had also had family connections with that organization.

Rei continued. "Judging by a fight that had broken out in one class, Ms Langley's skills in combat are comparable to Pilot Yumura's. Later conversation revealed that she holds a great deal of personal respect for the Fourth Child, and was apparently trained by the same teacher. This respect does not extend to the Fourth's Guardian. She and Agent Bouquet appear to dislike each other intensely. Agent Bouquet expressed her disappointment that Langley recovered from some illness that she had suffered."

"Interesting… Is there anything else?"

"One more thing. Judging from the expression on Agent Bouquet's face when she first encountered Ms Langley, I would say that in addition to disliking her, Agent Bouquet also fears her."

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. Dismissed."

After Rei left, Gendo considered the report she had given. If Kirika and this Chloe had had the same teacher, then the newcomer was almost certainly a Soldat. And if Bouquet, who could face seven to one odds and emerge unharmed, feared her, then Chloe was a very dangerous Soldat. The question then was why she was sent.

Was it to set a second pair of eyes on Kirika? Or was it to watch him?

* * *

Masahiro was watching a movie in his home when he heard the front door open. Since he had locked the door, he knew something was wrong. But before he could investigate, a figure glided into the room. Because the figure clung to the shadows of the dimly lit room, all he could make out was the rough height of the intruder, but he could sense that this person, whoever he or she was, was very dangerous.

"Good evening, Ishikawa-san." Came a quiet voice.

"Who-who are you?" He asked.

"I am Noir."

Noir. The elite enforcer of Les Soldats. What had he done to bring Noir's attention to him? He had been faithful to the organization. Why did they send a killer to him?

"I have a task for you, Ishikawa-san." The cloaked figure continued.

He heaved a sigh of relief. Whoever Noir had come for, it wasn't him.

"What do you want me to do?"

"I need you to tap into the data records of the MAGI, and retrieve some information for me. When you have done so, send the information to me by this means." With that, Noir threw a folded piece of paper onto a table.

"What do you wish to know?"

"The address of a NERV employee named Rei Ayanami."

* * *

A/N: This story has now cleared 10,000 views. Thank you, all.

I know that the anniversary of Yui's death took place before the 12th attacked, but Kirika probably wouldn't have come along if she hadn't learned to trust Shinji, which was something that was fixed to that event. So I swapped the events.

Shinji's separation from Kirika was a traumatic parting while both of them were still reeling from a traumatic incident. Asuka's wasn't as spectacular. Chloe's parents announced that they had a new job that required them to move, then the whole family went away. Chloe was turned over to Altena after they had relocated away from people who would notice if their daughter vanished. Far more damaging to Asuka was the fact that when her mother went insane shortly after the Langleys moved, Chloe was not there for Asuka to turn to the way that Shinji and Kirika could (briefly) turn towards each other.

When I came up with Chloe's resurrection, I knew I had to have something similar to the duel between Chloe and Kirika from episode 24 happen (Though in the show, they weren't using practice swords). I've never tried to do a fight scene like that before. How'd it turn out?

The youngest person Kaji is seen to flirt with is Maya, who is 5-6 years younger than him. The oldest person Kaji refused to flirt with is Asuka, who is 15-16 years younger than him. Exactly where between these two points he places the cutoff point of 'too young for me' is open for debate.


	13. Dead Girls Walking

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 13

Dead Girls Walking

Three pilots and one Section 2 agent walked through the streets of Tokyo-3 to their homes.

"So tell me," Asuka said. "When did you two meet my cousin?"

"Cousin?" Mireille asked. "Chloe's your cousin?" Asuka nodded. Mireille paused, thinking back on the details of her first meeting with the girl.

"It was just about a year ago. We met in a library in Paris, while Kirika and I were working on a job that turned out to be more complicated that I thought it would be. Since then, we've run into each other every now and then. It's funny how often it would happen, given that the only people we ever told about where we were going on a job were our clients."

Mireille and Kirika had brushed aside questions of what their previous occupation had been by saying that they were consultants. As was fairly typical, nobody had ever bothered asking what they were consulted about. Privately, Mireille suspected that Chloe was responsible for that job in Paris being more difficult than expected (i.e., the target had considerably more guards than he had had the day before).

"So why don't you get along?" Shinji asked.

Mireille and Kirika exchanged a glance. Obviously, the whole truth, namely 'She tried to cut my throat and Kirika stabbed her in the heart with a dessert fork' would bring up a great many unwanted questions.

"Chloe and Mireille never got along. I'm not sure why on Chloe's side, but given the number of attempts on our lives in the weeks before we met, I can see why Mireille wasn't willing to trust her. I knew her much better than Mireille did, and I didn't know her nearly as well as I thought I did."

Shinji looked puzzled. "I thought you two were friends."

" _Were_." Kirika's snapped response made it clear that she didn't want to discuss the matter any further. The rest of the trip was silent.

* * *

Two young women were in their apartment, discussing an impossible event that had happened that day.

"How did Chloe get here, Kirika?" Mireille asked.

"I don't know. She just showed up as a new transfer student." Kirika answered.

"But it's not possible! We both saw her die months ago. Her body was noticeably stiffening and cooling when we laid her body on that slab. Dead people don't come back to life. It has to be an impostor."

"It isn't an impostor. That really is Chloe."

"How can you be so sure?"

"In gym class, we ended up dueling with kendo sticks. That match proved conclusively that she was really Chloe.

"You could potentially find someone of Chloe's height, give her cosmetic surgery to resemble Chloe, use cosmetics to conceal any coloring differences, and train the imposter to imitate Chloe's voice and speech patterns. But you can't counterfeit a fighting style. Not to the extent that you could imitate it perfectly in a real fight."

Mireille nodded. A fighting style had to be ingrained at the reflexive level to be of any use in a serious fight, as fights often progressed too quickly for the people involved to consciously think about what they needed to do. Because of that, they were as individualistic as fingerprints. Besides, if Les Soldats had a second person capable of perfectly duplicating Chloe's skills, they would have used her during the trials.

"But how is that possible?"

"I don't know Mireille. I just don't know."

"Do you have any idea why she's here?"

"Presumably she was sent to kill someone. I don't know who."

"And unfortunately, we can't expose her as an assassin without explaining how we know that. Which would expose us as well."

"So what do we do?"

"Nothing. That's all we can do for now. Given her relation to Soryu, we'll probably be running into her regularly from now on. We'll need to keep our eyes open for when she makes her move – whatever that may be."

"Isn't odd that two out of the three of us have relatives that are pilots?"

"Very odd. And the way things are going, the only reason I'd be surprised if it turns out that I'm related to Ayanami is because the last I checked I didn't have _any_ living relatives. Whatever Les Soldats has in mind with this place, it must be big."

There wasn't anything that Kirika could do in response to that except nod in agreement.

* * *

Chloe swiftly darted through the streets of Tokyo-3, flitting from shadow to shadow as she journeyed to the place where her target waited.

Masahiro had done his job admirably. While accessing the personnel records of NERV personnel would involve going up against the highest level of passwords, encryption, and security flags that the MAGI could produce, the same could not be said of the student records of the Tokyo-3 school system. And since schools require that the contact information of all students and their guardians be on file, Ayanami's home address was easily obtained without triggering the alarms that would have gone off had any uncleared person tried to tap NERV records concerning where the First Child lived.

Chloe didn't know why Ayanami had to die, but she didn't particularly care. Les Soldats had ordered her death, and therefore she would die. Had it not been for the need to maintain her cover for later operations, she could have done the job at school earlier that week. Now that she knew where her target lived, she could do the job there and not be observed. Since it was a Friday evening, she might even be able to keep anyone from noticing that something had happened to Ayanami until the weekend was over. Judging from what she'd seen of the other girl over the week, nobody was likely to visit her and notice she was dead until she didn't arrive in class on Monday.

There were two men loitering around the outside of the apartment complex. They didn't look that impressive to a casual observer, but Chloe instantly recognized them as security guards. She silently approached one from the shadows, removing a knife from under her cloak. One quick throw and the man fell to the ground, the blade piercing his windpipe. The other guard barely had a chance to turn to face his partner before he was also knifed.

Chloe retrieved her knives, wiped them on the clothes of her victims, and entered the building. She didn't notice that the second man had managed to trigger an emergency signal before he died.

* * *

Captain Arima was on duty when the emergency signal came in. Checking the location of the signal, he saw that it came from the First Child's residence.

Of all the Children, Ayanami was the most exposed. The residence of the other three was well known, and access couldn't be as strictly controlled due to the fact that other people lived there, but any attacker there would have to go through the Fourth's guardian, who was a formidable fighter, and the Fourth Child herself, who was every bit as dangerous, and possibly more so.

Ayanami's residence wasn't as well known, giving the limited protection of secrecy. Since she was the only person still living in the building, Section 2 could easily tell who did and did not belong there. But there was one problem. Rei wasn't as capable of defending herself at the level of the Fourth Child, and unlike the Second and Third Children, she didn't have a pair of highly trained fighters living across the hall. Should anything penetrate the security perimeter, Ayanami would be on her own.

Section Two had bungled things twice recently. He wasn't about to drop the ball a third time. He immediately called for fast response teams to protect the First Child. He was in the first team that was ready to leave.

* * *

Chloe walked through the nearly abandoned complex. The building wasn't in very good shape. The paint was peeling, the walls behind the paint were cracking, and the floor obviously hadn't been mopped in months. Tokyo-3 wasn't that old of a city, how had the place managed to reach such a state of disrepair in such a short period of time?

Upon reaching the apartment in question, she turned to examine the lock. As she turned, her foot nudged the door, causing it to slowly swing open. That was strange. Not only was the door not locked, it wasn't even fully closed.

Entering the apartment, Chloe heard the crackle of paper underfoot. Looking down, she saw a pile of unopened envelopes that had apparently fallen to the ground from the mail slot, which was apparently jammed to overflowing. Even allowing for the impressive rate at which some places sent out junk mail, there was no way that pile could have accumulated in less than three months.

As she made her way through the dimly lit apartment, it was quickly apparent that the place was a mess. Used bandages and other pieces of trash were carelessly discarded on the floor. The last time the floor had been mopped was probably a year or more before the last time anyone mopped the hallway. The only places that Chloe had ever seen in the condition that this apartment was in were slums and war zones. Now that she thought about it, this place could arguably be called a slum in a war zone.

Why was a key member of NERV's staff living in such a dump? And why hadn't she tried to clean it up herself? It wasn't just degrading, it was unsanitary. Were the other pilots forced to live in conditions like this? Chloe resolved that if Gendo Ikari had dared to do something like that to Kirika, then she would find a way to kill him for that, orders or no orders. Chloe saw the sleeping form of her target on a small, utilitarian bed. Chloe drew her dagger and closed in on her mark. Then she looked down.

In the dim lighting provided from the street lights, all Chloe could make out of her target was the shape of her body. And going by shape alone, the sleeping form looked like someone other that Ayanami to Chloe's eyes. And that other was someone that Chloe could never bring herself to wish harm to.

"Kirika?" She whispered.

The whisper had apparently been heard. The sleeping girl stirred, and then sat up in the bed. As clouds cleared in the sky outside the building, a stream of moonlight entered the building, illuminating the nude form of the girl in the bed.

"You have mistaken me for someone else, Classmate Langley." Rei Ayanami stated flatly. "Is there a reason why you are here?"

The illumination and Rei's words ended Chloe's hesitation. Kirika never talked like that. And the extra light revealed Rei's coloration, clearly showing that it was definitely not Chloe's ex-partner. Chloe stabbed with her dagger. To her great surprise, the blade stopped an inch before Rei's body, striking an invisible barrier. At the same moment, Chloe felt a strange sensation. She didn't know to describe it, she just knew that there was something about Ayanami that just felt _wrong_.

Chloe gritted her teeth and put more force into the thrust. At first the blade was unable to find purchase on the strange force field, but as Chloe concentrated, it slowly began to pierce the unexpected defense. Slowly the dagger sunk into the barrier, getting closer and closer to Rei's torso. Once the tip of the dagger sank into Ayanami's body, she gasped in pain and the barrier suddenly disappeared, the sense of wrongness vanishing with it. The blade slammed forward, piercing Rei's kidney and going straight through her body and exiting her back. Rei's face twisted in agony, then she slowly slid backwards, falling off the dagger and slumping back onto the mattress.

Chloe stabbed Rei's other kidney for good measure, then cleaned her weapon, then covered the body with the bedsheet. Then she turned and left the room, pausing only to drop a note she had been instructed to leave behind.

* * *

The van screeched to a halt outside the apartment building. The response team rushed out of the back of the car and approached the building. The first thing they saw was the bodies of the two men who had been assigned to watch the building that night. The second thing they saw was the door open, and a cloaked figure exiting the complex. The team all aimed their weapons at the figure.

"Identify yourself!" Arima commanded.

"There is no need for conflict. The person you came here to protect is already dead." The figure responded in a soft female voice. The team tensed at that calm statement.

"The only thing that conflict would accomplish here would be your deaths. If you stand aside, I will let you live." The girl continued.

Arima was impressed. Whoever this assassin was, she had the courage to threaten an entire Section 2 response team with imminent demise, despite being outnumbered and surrounded. No, that wasn't quite right. There was no threatening tone in the girl's voice. She was simply informing them that she could kill them all if she chose to and was offering them the option of running away and saving themselves as a courtesy. What could give the assassin such confidence? There were ten of them, armed with light automatic weapons. What could she do against such odds without the element of surprise?

One man fired a three round burst at the girl. The cloaked figure darted to one side, dodging the attack and sending back one of her own. The man who had opened fire fell to the ground with a throwing knife in his heart.

The girl dashed straight towards a man at the far end of the formation. Before he could get a shot off, she had planted a hand on one of his shoulders and flipped over him as if he was a pommel horse, somehow cutting his throat in the process. The man's hand squeezed the trigger of his rifle as he died, causing a spray of fire that cut down two more people. A second thrown knife took yet another man in the side of the throat, after which the cloaked girl ran off. All attempts at hitting her only struck the falling body of the man with the slashed throat.

Arima's jaw dropped in shock. Surrounded by a better equipped force that outnumbered her ten to one, the unknown girl had taken out five men in a matter of seconds without taking so much as a scratch in return. Whoever this girl was, she was _good_. And Section 2 hadn't actually driven her off; she'd simply decided to leave. He lowered his weapon and headed in the direction that she'd left in. He gazed into the shadows, trying to find the cloaked form, and not seeing it.

Two clattering noises drew his attention. Arima turned to see two more men fall to the ground, knives driven into the bases of their skulls. The assassin hadn't retreated at all, she'd simply withdrawn from the light and circled around to attack from behind. Arima dropped his rifle in shock as a knife took a third man between the eyes. As he fumbled for his pistol, the girl drew a dagger and disemboweled his last surviving subordinate with it. Then she came for him. He barely managed to get his weapon out of its holster in time and emptied the entire clip as he aimed it in.

Most of the bullets went wide, but one was properly aimed, heading straight for the girl's face. But before it could strike, it stopped, as if the bullet had struck an invisible wall. Both parties froze, equally surprised by the sight of a nine millimeter bullet hanging in the air and flattened by its impact with nothing that either of them could perceive. Then it fell to the ground. The sound of the falling bullet striking the ground ended the moment, leaving Arima with an empty gun and his opponent with a drawn dagger.

The head of NERV Section 2 would not survive to explain his unit's third failure to Commander Ikari.

* * *

Ritsuko had been woken up by a call from a staffer in the GeoFront reporting that the mystery AT Field had appeared again, this time in the vicinity of Ayanami's apartment. She quickly dressed and drove there, hoping to get a glance of whatever had caused it. Whatever it was, it certainly wasn't a normal Angel. Those never bothered hiding their AT Fields once they got around to bringing them up.

What awaited her at the end of her short trip was a slaughter. Eleven dead bodies were scattered outside the apartment complex, and a twelfth person was likely to join them in death in a matter of minutes. As she got up from examining the mortally wounded man, a van pulled up and more men came out of it.

"Identify yourself!" Commanded the leader of the group.

"Dr Ritsuko Akagi." She replied, slowly reaching into her coat and removing her ID. While the rest of the Section 2 men covered her with their guns, the leader approached and took her ID, checking it carefully.

"What happened here, Dr Akagi?"

"I don't know, Sergeant. I just got here myself."

"Do you know if the First Child is safe?"

As Ritsuko shook her head, the Sergeant motioned for two men to check out Rei's apartment. Ritsuko quickly followed. The two men stormed the apartment, quickly searching the area and finding nobody other than Rei. While they did that, Ritsuko examined Rei. It didn't take much of an examination to discover that the girl no longer had a pulse.

"We need to get her to the Hospital quickly. You two, use the mattress as a stretcher. Take her to one of the vans and have a car train waiting for us at the nearest access point." She ordered.

The two men quickly complied. Ritsuko followed, ostensibly to keep watch on the 'wounded' girl, but actually to make sure nobody realized the real reason why Rei was so still. She would have a difficult evening. She would need to get the First Child's corpse into the GeoFront, activate another Ayanami clone, swap the corpse with the clone, and dispose of the body without anyone noticing that there were two Reis – one of whom was dead.

At least she had learned one thing about the source of the mystery AT Field. Whoever was generating it, he certainly wasn't friendly.

* * *

The phone rang as Mireille sat down for breakfast. She reached over and answered it.

"This is the Bouquet residence."

"Agent Bouquet, this is Lieutenant Hatanaka. You are to report to the GeoFront immediately and report in to Conference Room 143. Before you leave, inform the Second through Fourth Children that they are not to leave the apartment complex for any reason until you return." Came a voice at the other end of the line.

"Understood."

That message didn't sound good. Lieutenant Izuru Hatanaka was the second in command of Section 2, and Conference Room 143 was the largest Conference Room in the GeoFront within a half mile of the Section 2 main office. That meant it was going to be a big meeting, and when security forces have large meetings, it meant that trouble was coming.

After passing on the message, Mireille left the complex. As she did, her hunch that something was up was strongly reinforced by the six Section 2 teams who were setting up a perimeter. Mireille made her way to the GeoFront and the specified conference room, which quickly filled up with what had to be half the Section 2 agents in Tokyo-3. Lieutenant Hatanaka walked up to the podium and began speaking.

"Last night, at approximately 2300 hours, the two men who had the night watch on the First Child's residence were attacked by a person or persons unknown. The intruders then broke into Pilot Ayanami's apartment and attacked her. On his way back out, the intruders was intercepted by a Section 2 response team lead by Captain Arima. The team was completely wiped out.

"Fortunately, a second team was able to respond in time to find the First Child and get her to NERV Medical. Dr Akagi reports that her injuries looked a great deal worse than they actually were, and that Ayanami will be able to leave the hospital tomorrow evening.

"Ladies and Gentlemen, the first line of defense for the Children has always been the fact that few people outside of Tokyo-3 knew who they were. Between the attack on the First Child last night and the attack on the Second through Fourth over two months ago, the identities of the Children are obviously no longer a secret. And this new batch of attackers seems to be much more formidable than the first one was. Apart from Ayanami, who apparently didn't get a good look at them, they left no surviving witnesses, and as a result all we know about them is that they use knives as a weapon of choice.

"In light of these events, we need to completely overhaul our escort and guard protocols. That is why we are here today, and this meeting is not ending until we have done so."

The meeting broke into groups looking over standard procedures and taking them apart to find flaws that needed correction. As Mireille worked with her group, she thought about the description of the attackers. A Section 2 team was wiped out by an unidentified person or persons armed with knives less than a week after one of the world's top assassins, who used knives as her weapon of choice, moved to Tokyo-3. That was a bit far-fetched to be a coincidence. The only thing that didn't ring true was the part about Rei surviving with a wound that looked deadly but was actually minor. Chloe didn't make mistakes like that.

A messenger came into the room and headed for Hatanaka.

"Sir, this was found on the floor of the First's apartment. It is not her handwriting." The messenger said, handing over a sheet of paper. The Lieutenant looked at the note, then headed to Mireille.

"Agent Bouquet, you're fluent in French. Could you tell me what this note says?"

Mireille looked at the sheet of paper. Even though she didn't know Rei's handwriting, she could tell it wasn't hers. It wasn't anybody's handwriting. Somebody had created the note using a stencil, creating a two line message without leaving any traces of the author's handwriting in it:

_Aux profondeurs des feux de l'enfer,_

_Leurs âmes noires leurrent les enfants perdus._

Mireille recognized the message as part of the description of Noir. This raised the odds that Chloe was responsible for the attack to near certainty. Who else would leave such a message?

The only problem again was how Rei survived. There was no way that Rei could defend herself from someone of Chloe's skill if Chloe wanted her dead. Just like in the training accident last month, Rei had somehow managed to suffer a lethal wound and make a miraculous recovery. How was that possible?

"To the depths of Hell's fire," Mireille dutifully translated, "Their black souls lure the lost children."

* * *

"Judging from the note left behind at the scene, which threatened to send all the Children to Hell, it appears that the parties responsible for the attack on the First Child were another group of religious fanatics. From the language, it appears that the group is French, who probably twigged to her identity from the same security leak in the French government that made the previous attack possible. Apart from a rough idea of the shape of the knives used to kill Captain Arima and the rest of the agents on the scene, that's all we have to go on at this time."

Gendo nodded, frowning. There was probably more evidence as to the person(s) who had killed Rei around, but Section 2 response teams were (apparently rather ineffectively) trained as guards, not as crime scene investigators. By the time they were finished searching the area, they had pretty much ruined any forensic evidence that could have been discovered by the investigative team that had been called in after the search was over.

The acting head of Section 2 continued his report. "In regards to dealing with future incidents, we've arranged for the First Child's residence to be relocated to the same apartment complex as the other Children. That way, we can have her join the escort that the other Children have on their regularly scheduled activities. In the event of an attack, we have drawn up plans to have all the Children congregate in one strongpoint and hold that point until we can relieve them. We will be stationing two response teams at the GeoFront access point closest to the complex so that we can respond more rapidly. In addition, we are looking into checking out the Children on handguns. Any of the Children whose marksmanship is high enough will be given a weapon and a concealed carry permit. That way they can defend themselves if necessary."

"Thank you for the update, Lieutenant Hatanaka. Dismissed." Gendo said.

Hatanaka saluted, and left. Gendo sighed. Whoever was responsible for that leak in France, Gendo vowed to see the man exposed and broken. Even if it was too late to plug the leak, the leaker had complicated the scenario, and Gendo was having enough trouble with the scenario as it was with Adam missing and Unit 01 rejecting Rei. If these fanatics had attacked three or four Angels later, it wouldn't matter as much. But at this stage, losing a pilot could be catastrophic.

Also irritating was the cumulative impact of the assassination on Rei's training. Rei had been due for a memory backup when she had been killed in the activation test. The cover story to conceal the secret of her recovery had prevented her from getting any pilot training in for an entire month. And now, right when she was finally starting to make up for the lost time, she had died again. Rei IV was equipped with a set of memories and skills that were two months out of date, and it would take a great deal of effort just to reproduce the training she had lost from her first death, let alone get her to the point she was supposed to be at by this date.

It was almost as if someone was trying to interfere with his scenario whenever the opportunity presented itself.

* * *

Chloe entered the classroom and went to her desk. Powering up her laptop, she checked her email. Nothing much of interest there, just the same messages that had been showing up every morning for the past week. Half of the school kendo team wanted Kirika and her to join so they could annihilate the other schools whenever a competition came up, and the other half just wanted them to have an exhibition match at the beginning of their competitions in the hopes of scaring the other teams away. She deleted them without replying; hopefully they'd take a hint eventually. After she had finished with that, she looked up to see a group of classmates entering. Rei Ayanami was one of them.

Chloe wasn't sure how she managed to avoid making a scene at seeing the girl she'd killed three days before walk into the room, but she somehow did it. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. Ayanami had been stabbed straight through the kidneys. A wound of that type pretty much guaranteed a quick and extremely painful death. The only way Ayanami could have possibly survived would be if the girl had been keeping a fully staffed emergency room in her closet, which had the appropriate donor organs in stock and been able to start the transplant operation the moment Chloe had left. And even in that absurdly unlikely case, the odds of survival wouldn't be all that good.

What in the world was going on?

* * *

That day at lunch, Kirika walked up to Chloe.

"Did you enjoy the visit you paid to a classmate of ours over the weekend?" She asked. "You certainly made a lasting impression on some people who didn't want you paying a call on her."

Chloe tried to play innocent. "What are you…"

"Please, Chloe. Mireille and I can recognize your handiwork. We know it was you. I'm not going to bother asking why you did it; knowing you, you probably didn't bother asking before you accepted the assignment anyway. But I bet you were surprised when you learned that your little trip turned out to be a waste of time, weren't you?"

It seemed that playing innocent hadn't worked. Chloe hadn't thought it would, but she had to try. But since Kirika was talking about it over lunch, she probably wasn't planning to take any action over the incident at this time.

"How did she recover?"

"You tell me. This isn't the first time that the First has recovered from something that should have killed her.

"Just get one thing straight, Chloe. What happened last Friday was an internal matter for you and yours. If you people want to wipe yourselves out, go right ahead. I won't try to stop you. But if you do anything to hurt Shinji, I will kill you. As many times as necessary."

With that, Kirika walked away. Some people who had overheard the conversation tried to figure out what they had talking about. However, since the two had been talking in Italian the entire time, the only thing any of them understood was the few personal names that had been brought up.

Chloe looked at Shinji and felt a jab of envy. How had he managed to get so close to Kirika over the course of a few short months that she would be willing to kill for his sake? Perhaps she could get him to tell her. Since he was related to Kirika, he wouldn't be the threat to her plans that Mireille was.

Chloe was so focused on that idea that she didn't really notice the last thing that Kirika had said to her.

* * *

Classes had ended for the day. Students filed out of their classrooms, gathering with their friends to spend the afternoon in whatever entertainments they had planned for themselves now that they were free of the seemingly endless purgatory known as Second Impact lectures.

For the pilots, all that meant was that it was time to go home. They headed to the gate, met up with Mireille, and started making their way back to the complex they all lived in. As they were traveling, Rei asked a question.

"Who is the girl with the purplish hair? I do not recall seeing her in our class before."

The rest of the group turned and looked at Rei as if she had grown a second head. Chloe, who had been tailing them, darted down a side street and headed away.

When she had killed Rei, the girl had recognized her on sight and addressed her by name. Now, after somehow recovering from a fatal wound, she no longer knew who she was. What did that mean?

* * *

A/N: The method in which Rei's address was compromised shows exactly why you should never store classified information on a system that is not rated to store information at that classification level or higher. The home address of a key government employee involved in a Top Secret military project is Secret or above. It was stored on a computer designed to secure the home addresses of an average schoolchild, which would be considered Sensitive But Unclassified at best. Because of that mistake, the effective classification of that data was downgraded to Sensitive But Unclassified when it shouldn't have.

Rei isn't having much fun in this story, is she? Unfortunately, this isn't likely to change. I have nothing against Rei as a character, but the story here requires her to remain as Gendo's lackey, and to confuse various parties by not staying dead when she should. If I ever get the notion to write a second NGE fic, I'll try to be nicer to her there.

The note Chloe left is the last line of one of the three descriptions of Noir that is given at the beginning of every episode. The part that is the same in all three versions is:

_Noir… It is the name of an ancient fate…_

_Two maidens that govern death…_

Kirika's interpretation (The most frequently given) ends with

_The peace of the newly born,_

_Their black hands protect._

Mireille's interpretation ends with

_To ward the darkness from the nursing babes,_

_Their black robes serve as shields._

Chloe's interpretation was given on the note. It's interesting to observe that two of the three descriptions describe Noir's role to be that of a guardian, while only one describes that role to be that of a killer.


	14. There's Something About Rei (And Chloe)

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 14

There's Something About Rei (And Chloe)

The pilots (and bodyguard) all stared at Rei. How could she not know who Chloe was? Given the nature of the reunion between the cousins the week before, the only way that anyone who had been in the room at the time (As Rei had been) could not have noticed her would have been to be completely deaf and totally oblivious to everything that was going on. And even that would only excuse the ignorance for one period. During the gym duel, Rei had been accidentally tackled by students trying to avoid a flying kendo mask. Getting knocked to the ground as a result of the actions of someone tended to fix that person in one's memory. Besides, the details of that duel had spread to at least half of the school by the end of lunch. By the end of the day, a person would have been hard pressed to find someone in the school who _didn't_ know who Chloe Langley was. Yet somehow Rei had remained in that state after an entire week.

"What are you talking about Wondergirl?" Asuka demanded. "My cousin's been in our class for the past week!"

"That girl is your cousin?" Rei inquired?

"Sheesh! Are you sure you didn't hit your head when your apartment was broken into or something? Maybe you should get another checkup if your memory is this scrambled."

Rei considered this. "You may have a point, Pilot Soryu."

The closest GeoFront access point was only a short detour from the route from the school to their home. Once there, Rei broke off from the group and entered NERV HQ to seek another medical examination.

* * *

Asuka wasn't the only person who was confused by Rei's forgetfulness. Chloe knew for a fact that Rei had known who she was the week before. And that wasn't even the start of the strange things about the girl.

Aside from the memory issue, Rei Ayanami had somehow managed to make a full recovery from a wound that should have been almost instantly fatal. In addition, Kirika's comments implied that this wasn't the first time that this had happened – and that she was just as much in the dark as to how as Chloe was.

Kirika had also come close to flat out stating that Rei was a Soldat. Chloe knew that this was not true. Her briefing for this assignment included memorizing the names of all Soldat agents in Tokyo-3. It hadn't been that hard of a task, seeing as there were only seven names on the list, all of whom were low level agents with the exception of Gendo Ikari (Who she was under orders to not contact, as it was suspected that he may be compromised). So unless Ayanami was being groomed by one of them for recruitment, Kirika's conclusion had to be wrong.

There was also the fact that Rei resembled Kirika enough that Chloe had mistaken one for the other when she was only able to make out a silhouette. In fact, if Rei dyed her hair and used contacts and makeup to alter her eye and skin color, they could pass as sisters.

And what was with the strange barrier that had nearly stopped her attack? Chloe had seen attacks of hers get dodged before. She had seen them get blocked before. She had never seen them simply stop after colliding with nothing. What had Rei done to make that happen? The only thing Chloe had ever seen like that was when… that splash of water had struck an invisible barrier before striking her, and when that Section 2 officer shot at her and the bullet stopped.

There was no mistaking it. Whatever ability had enabled Rei to briefly stop her dagger, Chloe possessed also. If she hadn't had it, she could very well have died. Thinking about it, Rei's hair and eye color were identical to her own without the dye and contacts. Her coloration was the result of that strange disease she had caught. Was Rei's coloration the result of the same disease? And was the barrier a side effect of the illness? If so, what in the world was that disease?

She would need to think this over as she prepared her report to send back to Breffort. In the meantime, she would indulge in a secret pleasure of hers. It wasn't possible to do so at the manor, and being in a city made doing so much easier than it was in some places she'd been on assignment in.

* * *

Ritsuko was trying to write a report concerning the mystery Angel that had killed the third Rei. The last of the data from the autopsies of the dead bodies and examination of the crime scene had come in, and she was trying to integrate that with what the various detection systems had noted about this unknown enemy. All in all, there were only four real facts that were known about it.

First Item: The Angel was highly secretive. The only times the Angel had been detected at all was when it's AT Field was active, and that had never once happened for a period longer than three seconds. The MAGI hadn't even been able to conclusively identify the pattern type from a sampling that small. The main reason they were operating under the assumption that the AT Field was from an Angel was because the only things that were proven to be able to generate a discrete AT Field that the MAGI could notice were Angels and Evangelions, and smuggling something as large as an Evangelion into a city and keeping it unnoticed was close to impossible.

Second Item: The Angel was roughly human sized, if not necessarily human shaped. This was proved by the fact that it was able to travel the corridors of Rei's apartment complex without any difficulties. With the exception of the Eleventh Angel, none of the other known Angels would have even fit through the door. Heck, most of them were larger than the building.

Third Item: The Angel could and did use human tools. With the exception of two men killed by friendly fire, every single one of the wounds looked like knife wounds. Traces of metal within the wounds and the shapes left on the clothes of the Section 2 men and the sheets of Rei's bed where the murder weapons were cleaned confirmed that.

Fourth Item: The Angel was extremely fast. With ten people trying to shoot it, only one bullet didn't hit another Section 2 agent, the street, or a wall. While it was possible that everyone in the response team was a lousy shot, the law of averages and the number of bullets fired implied that the Angel should have needed to have used its AT Field more often than just once even in that case.

Her work was interrupted by the arrival of Rei in her office.

"Is there something you need?" She asked.

"I appear to have been inadequately briefed as to events that have occurred between my last backup and the death of my previous self. I would have brought this to the Commander's attention, but he is currently occupied and I do not know long it will be until he will be available."

Ritsuko cursed under her breath. Rei's true nature was one of NERV's most important secrets, and the last thing they needed was for anyone to discover it. The world as a whole would not find the fact that NERV had played God to acquire their first pilot amusing. Especially since it might lead them on the path to discover that NERV was planning on playing God on a much larger scale later on.

A part of the reason behind Rei's upbringing was to make it difficult for a casual observer to notice that it was possible that one Rei had been replaced with another one in the event of her death. The danger of Rei dying just before a backup and losing data had been foreseen. Getting Rei to catch up on lost academic information was fairly simple, as Rei was a fairly meticulous note taker. The next Rei could check the notes of the previous Rei and know exactly what to study in order to catch up. NERV related information was harder to make up, but it was still fairly easy to work out what she had lost. Lost interpersonal data was much harder to replace. There was no such thing as a carefully stored database of schoolgirl gossip to be consulted, but the community as a whole tended to know who had learned of what developments. If Rei tried to mingle with a group of classmates believing that month-old gossip was new, it would be immediately noticed.

To avoid this, Rei was conditioned to avoid social contacts. The only time she ever really associated with classmates was when she was assigned to work on a group assignment, and even then the content and duration of that association was restricted to that of the assignment. By avoiding all cliques, she was universally ignorant of all gossip. Nobody would notice that she was unaware of something that she had been told last week, because nobody would have bothered telling her in the first place. And since she didn't have any close associates, nobody looking at Rei was likely to be more than just a casual observer. Now there was a potential flaw in this defense.

"What precisely triggered this?"

"There has been a new student in class for the past week. This student is apparently related to the Second Child. But I do not recall this girl."

That was a problem. Rei might not be expected to know much about her classmates, but she could be reasonably expected to know who they are. Especially those who had a known major connection to one of her coworkers.

"How many people noticed this?"

"At present, only the other pilots. They believe it is a possible side effect of injuries suffered by the attack last Friday. I am officially here to get an examination to verify this theory."

Then the secret was still fairly secure. Good.

"Thank you for bringing this to my attention. The Commander and I will get back to you about this."

"Understood."

* * *

Gendo stood in the secure videoconference room. Surrounding him were the images of several black monoliths, upon each of which was inscribed the word SEELE and an identification number. The fact that only these shapes and voices were being transmitted by the SEELE members to the GeoFront made it difficult for anyone who somehow managed to tap the transmission to identify who any of the other individuals involved in the conversation were. Not that Gendo wasn't fully aware of the identities of the people he was speaking with. He had figured that out years before, and had several partially worked out scenarios in which he could frame their civilian identities for crimes that wouldn't splash onto him. At least not until after his main scenario was complete, after which it didn't matter anyway.

"We hear that you have been unable to ensure the safety of the Children." SEELE 03 began. "What use are your expensive toys if there are no pilots?"

Gendo was unperturbed. "The initial security failure that resulted in the Children being in danger does not lie with NERV, but with the French government." He pointed out.

"That may be the case," SEELE 05 agreed, "And we shall certainly see to it that the fool responsible is dealt with, but the fact remains that the safety of the Children lies with NERV, and it appears to be unable to handle this. Especially since this is not the first time that you have encountered these fanatics. There had been another attack on the Children that nearly succeeded earlier, and we have reports that the Fourth Child was attacked before she was even approached to become a pilot!"

"We have questioned the sole survivor of the first attack again under the most powerful truth serums available. His group was not connected to the attack in Paris, and there are no other members of his group still living. This new attack and the one in Europe were from a different source, possibly multiple sources."

SEELE 02 obviously didn't care. "That doesn't matter, Ikari! Without the Children, the Evangelions are useless. Without the Evangelions, the Angels will triumph. If the Angels cannot be stopped, then Instrumentality will fail! It is imperative that the Children remain able to pilot until Instrumentality is ready to begin!"

"Even if the men guarding the First Child had been better prepared, it would not have mattered."

Lorenz Keele, SEELE 01, entered the conversation. "Explain."

"On the night the First Child was attacked, two brief AT Field manifestations were detected from the immediate vicinity of her residence. The first was at the approximate time she was attacked, and the second was at approximately the time the response team reached the scene and was slaughtered. As neither manifestation lasted longer than a few seconds, we were unable to classify the field pattern, but the conclusion is obvious. The assassin for this new group is an Angel."

" _What?"_ SEELE 04 demanded. "How is this possible? The Dead Sea Scrolls didn't speak of anything like this!"

"The scrolls do not speak of everything. It is possible that someone has managed to create a weapon using an artifact of the Angels in the same manner that we created the Evangelions. I have checked and found no missing samples of Angel tissue from our facilities in Tokyo-3, but such a sample could be taken from other locations where Evangelion units are under construction."

"We shall take that under advisement, Ikari. The rest of this meeting only concerns the committee." Keele announced. With that, the monoliths faded from sight.

As Gendo returned to his office, he came to the conclusion that his plan had worked perfectly. It was true that there were no Angel samples missing from the GeoFront. In order for something to be missing, it had to have been there in the first place. The Committee would search the other locations, realize that Adam was gone, and come to the conclusion that the cult had taken it. Which they probably had, just not from Germany.

Once they realized that something that could be used to set off Third Impact was missing, SEELE would tear the world apart looking for it in fear that someone else would trigger their own version of Instrumentality. And once they found them, Gendo could move in. Of course, it was possible that Agent Kaji would be exposed as the man who actually removed Adam from Germany. If so, he would have to be killed before he could try to implicate Gendo as an associate in the matter. That would be a loss, but not a critical one. The man had his uses, but he was far from indispensable.

In the meantime, the death of the third Rei had given him an idea. There had actually been three AT Field manifestations during that attack, not two. The first two appeared in almost exactly the same place at almost exactly the same time, which implied that the second was brought up to counter the first. With only two people likely to be in that place at that time – Rei and assassin who held Adam – the most probable explanation was that Rei had tried to protect herself with an AT Field and failed.

If that was the case, then perhaps the current Rei could manifest an AT Field as well. If she could be trained to do so, then he would have a weapon that could be used against the assassin. And once the assassin was defeated, Rei could then immediately proceed to trigger Third Impact – on Gendo's terms.

The Scenario was not in its planned state. But it had not failed completely. Not if Gendo had anything to say about it.

* * *

While Chloe loved the manor on which she was raised and trained, she was fully aware that her childhood home had its faults. The most prominent of those faults was that it was carefully maintained in the state it was in at the time it was built for reasons of tradition. As the manor had been built in the 11th century at the latest, this meant that it lacked various modern amenities that would have required remodeling to install. Amenities such as indoor plumbing and electricity.

Altena had made certain her pupils had received training on how to use modern technology, so as to not stand out when on missions. That didn't change the fact that unless said modern devices could be powered on batteries, and you brought those batteries with you, they would be useless when taken to the manor. An electric appliance is nothing but a fancy paperweight in a house with no power outlets.

As a result, said items were effectively forbidden at the manor. That meant no light bulbs, only candles. No dishwashers or washing machines, only cleaning by hand. No radios or CD players, if you wanted music you had to get an instrument and learn to play it yourself. And no movies, televised, recorded or in the theater.

It was the last that Chloe tended to feel the most. And even if she had to go to the nearest village for an errand, she still couldn't see much, as getting to the village involved a time-consuming ten mile hike through the mountains, and even if the task required staying overnight, the village had no theater, no cable, and the reception was terrible due to the village's location in a secluded valley in the Pyrenees. It was only when on actual missions that Chloe had the means and opportunity to sit back and watch a movie. Chloe made a point of trying to catch at least one movie, on the television in a hotel room if nowhere else, whenever she was on a mission that took her someplace where that was possible. One of the first things she had done in Tokyo-3 was to get an account at a DVD rental store.

Chloe was now in her apartment, enjoying something that was normally forbidden by circumstance if not by any actual rule. The movie she had picked up this day was about a man who could recover miraculously from almost any kind of mortal wound, who wandered the world fighting others like him while history passed him by. Chloe idly wondered if that was what was happening with Ayanami. If so, she'd need a bigger knife. Trying to remove someone's head with a dagger would be a very slow and messy process.

Chloe shook her head. The movie was a work of fiction, this was real life. She had enough to worry about without adding fantasies into the equation. She was much better off trying to figure out what was going on with that strange barrier – that was real. She had called it up somehow on two occasions. The only thing the two incidents had in common was that in both cases she hadn't wanted to be hit by something. She had an idea about that, one she planned to test out after the end of the film.

Once the film had ended, Chloe got out the tool she had prepared for her experiment – a tube of tennis balls. Turning to face a wall, she threw a ball at it. The ball bounced off, then flew back and hit her in the face. She picked up the next ball and tried again. The ball hit her in the shoulder. A third throw hit her in the leg. Again and again she threw the balls, attempting to see if she could get the ricocheting ball to bounce off of her before it actually hit. After ten minutes of self-inflicted minor injuries, she finally succeeded. After a few more throws had the same result, Chloe smiled. She could now reproduce what had happened. This would be a useful skill, considering the fact that it could stop a bullet. She still didn't know what caused it, though.

Chloe had selected her apartment to have a balcony and easy access to the fire escape. She went out onto the balcony to think. Because of this, she was in a position to see a large number of vehicles pull up around the building. Chloe put on her cloak and crept down the fire escape to see what was going on.

The vehicles were all from NERV. The people in them appeared to be technical personnel, not security. Chloe slid through the shadows and eavesdropped on what the leader of one group was saying.

"All right, people. The mystery AT Field popped up in this area. Doctor Akagi wants to know exactly what is causing it. It's only been a few minutes, whatever created it can't have gone far."

Chloe backed away. She had a name for the barrier now – AT Field. That gave her a starting point for figuring out where it was coming from. Unfortunately, it appeared that every time she used it, NERV could detect it, as if she was sending up flares to mark her position. That wasn't good. She would have to use the ability sparingly. But first, she needed to lure the investigators away from her home, or else they might figure out she was the one creating the field.

Chloe snuck past the NERV investigators and headed away from the building. After travelling about a mile, she called up the AT Field again. Then she deactivated it, turned down a side street, and swiftly headed off in a different direction. Eventually she came to a subway station. She took the subway until it connected with a different line, switched lines, switched lines again three stops later, and finally got off at a stop two miles away from where she had started. By the time she made it back home, an hour and a half after she had left, the investigators had all left to follow the false trail she had left.

As Chloe returned to her apartment, she realized there would be additional things she would need to add to her report.

* * *

Evening in Tokyo-3 was late morning for France. As such, Breffort was able to receive the encrypted email from Chloe almost as soon as she sent it. The message read:

_Attack on target appeared successful, but later evidence shows that target managed to make a full recovery at a rate far in excess of what would be normal considering an injury of that size, even if it had not been in a critical area. Target is now being watched by renegades. Will not be able to engage a second time without forcing a confrontation with them. Request instructions._

_Please send via courier any available information regarding a phenomenon known as an AT Field._

The report confirmed it: Ayanami was a clone, just as Chloe was. Breffort didn't know what Ikari was planning to do with his clone, but the fact that he hadn't reported that he was doing so was disobedience in and of itself. Fortunately, the copy that Ikari had apparently made of his daughter couldn't possibly be the equal of the original. Ikari didn't have the means to train Rei to the same extent that Kirika was, nor did he have the opportunity to upload Kirika's skills and copy them into Rei the same way that the skills of the original Chloe had been copied into the replacement.

Breffort wasn't sure why Chloe needed the file, but there was no point in denying the request. Providing her with information that he had already obtained from NERV would not run the risk of compromising an agent that would be entailed in trying to get someone to steal a second copy. Breffort sent back his reply.

_Do not attempt any further action against target at this time. Remain in the area and observe. Further orders will come later._

_The requested information is en route._

* * *

Kaji had spent most of the past two weeks outside of Tokyo-3 on business, both NERV's and that of his actual employers. The work on behalf of Japanese Intelligence had been more edifying than the work he had done for Section 2. He now had proof that three more companies in the Marduk Institute were dummy corporations. Putting that together with the rest of the file that had been assembled on the Institute, that meant that they were are all fake. The enormous and secretive organization responsible for identifying potential EVA pilots was an unbelievably elaborate cover for a subdepartment of either NERV or SEELE, possibly both.

He hadn't been in town the night Ayanami had been attacked, but he had heard about the incident quickly enough. One of the most damning points about the incident was the fact that the only thing the guards had managed to hit in the battle was each other. As a result of that, all Section 2 personnel had been ordered to get requalified in marksmanship and spend more time practicing their aim afterwards. This was why Kaji was heading to the firing range.

Three of the Children were there doing the same thing. More accurately, they were just finishing up. Kirika had apparently decided to try to break the range record, and had quite possibly done it. Shinji hadn't done nearly as well as his sister, but had still managed to get a respectable score. Asuka had failed to qualify, and was grumbling about it.

"You're much better shot than your cousin." Kirika commented, looking at Asuka's target sheet.

Cousin? Kaji didn't remember Asuka having a cousin, and as he had been her guardian for several years, he would have should have run into this person at some point. How would an amnesiac DGSE operative know more about Asuka than he did?

"What are you saying, Fourth Child?" Asuka asked angrily.

"I'm saying that I've seen Chloe shoot, and she couldn't hit someone standing a meter away from her."

"I guess we won't bother trying to hire her for Section 2, then." Kaji commented jokingly.

"Kaji!" Asuka shouted gladly.

"Hello, Asuka. What's this about your cousin? You've never mentioned having any cousins before."

"Chloe moved away shortly before Mother… became ill. She just came to Tokyo-3 last week."

Ah. Asuka hadn't been in the habit of talking about her cousin before because it made her think about another event that had happened at about the same time. She always had tried to not speak of her mother's madness if at all possible. Whenever she had to refer to it at all, she simply said that her mother had fallen ill and died, never mentioning the fact that the illness was of the mind and not the body.

"I have to spend some time on the firing range myself. Why don't you tell me more about your cousin later?"

Pleased at the thought of spending more time with him, Asuka readily agreed. Kaji then went to sign in with the range master.

After Kaji finished in the firing range, he met up with Asuka in one of the GeoFront's break rooms. There, Asuka told him about her cousin Chloe, who had moved away from Germany with her parents about ten years ago, and abruptly showed up in class the week before, having never made any attempt to contact her family at any time between those two points.

Then she started to describe the events of the previous week. How Chloe had apparently known Kirika the entire time both of them were missing, even if the other girl didn't remember most of that time. How they dueled in a vicious battle with kendo sticks in the school gymnasium, only to comment after it was over that normally they used real weapons for that sort of thing. That the two had apparently come to a parting of ways sometime before Kirika had arrived in Tokyo-3.

 _That_ got Kaji's attention. Was Chloe another DGSE operative? Or possibly, given the ending of the friendship of Chloe and Kirika, an _ex-_ DGSE operative? If so, who was she working for now?

"It's funny," Asuka commented. "Once I got here, I tried to look Chloe up so I could contact her. But according to the MAGI, she had somehow ceased to exist."

The break room had a number of computer terminals in it. While they were meant for harmless web browsing, they were able to access non-classified sections of the MAGI mainframe. Kaji sat down in front of one and started looking around. It didn't take him long to find the proper searching algorithm. Looking up the name Chloe Langley, he found there was indeed a person filed under that name. Asuka took a look at the results and was even more confused.

"That's Chloe… But everything in this file is wrong. Those aren't the names of her parents, that's not where she was born, it doesn't even have her nationality right. It's like her entire life has been wiped clean and replaced with total nonsense."

That was odd. Data doesn't spontaneously vanish. It also doesn't spontaneously reappear. It most especially doesn't reappear as an obvious forgery. This wasn't a coincidence.

Which led Kaji to wonder. Nobody in Asuka's family had seen Chloe for ten years. How did Asuka know the person claiming to be her cousin really was her cousin and not just someone who answered to the same name?

* * *

Kaji and Mireille were meeting in his home. This time Mireille had requested the meeting, using the continued charade of their apparent romance to pass the message.

"Have you heard of the new girl in the Children's class?" She asked.

"That so-called cousin of Asuka's who just appeared from nowhere?" Kaji said.

"I see you're suspicious about her. What tipped you off?"

"I've known Asuka for years, and hadn't even known that this cousin existed until today. Asuka apparently hasn't had any contact with this girl for nearly ten years. How do we know that she really is Asuka's cousin? Especially since Asuka mentioned that all records of this girl vanished without a trace, then one day reappeared – except the replacement records were fakes that didn't even get the names of her parents right."

"I have no idea if Chloe is really Asuka's cousin or not. I do know that she is definitely the Soldat assassin that nearly killed me back in France."

A Soldat assassin? Who one of the pilots was willing to accept as family? That didn't sound good. One part of that seemed off, though. He could accept the concept of a 14 year old being a trained killer. The French had obviously done it to Kirika, so there was no reason that someone else couldn't have done the same thing. But there was what Kirika had said…

"I heard your ward claim that she couldn't hit a man at point blank range. And it's hard to walk around with a sword without drawing attention to yourself. How dangerous can she be?"

"Chloe might be a terrible shot with a gun, but she's a master with knives. I can only think of three people that she's attacked who have lived. Me, Kirika, and Rei Ayanami."

"So what happened at Rei's apartment was her doing?"

"An elite killer who uses knives as her weapon of choice shows up and a dozen men are killed by an unknown assailant using knives less than a week later? A bit far for a coincidence. Especially when most of the stab wounds are exactly the same shape as her throwing knives. The only question is how Rei managed to survive."

"You're right. I haven't heard anything about Ayanami having had any self-defense training beyond the basics. How did she survive when twelve more highly trained people didn't? The story about her getting a nasty-looking superficial wound doesn't make sense. No killer that good would make a mistake that simple."

"Exactly. And no, I don't have the slightest idea how that happened."

"Is there anything we can do about Chloe?"

"Not that I can see. The only reason I know that she had killed Captain Arima is because I recognize her handiwork. Without finding either a knife with her fingerprints at the scene, or a knife with the blood of one of the dead men in her possession, neither of which we're likely to find, there isn't any way to actually prove it. And even if you did, you'd need a small army to arrest her, and most of them would die in the process.

"Chloe is one of the most dangerous people alive. Don't cross her if you want to live." With that final statement, Mireille left, leaving Kaji with only questions.

Who was Chloe, really? Why was she claiming to be Asuka's cousin? How did Rei manage to not be killed by her?

And how dangerous did she have to be in order to make Mireille, a member of the near-legendary assassination team known as Noir fear her so openly? What could make that even possible?

Then he remembered: This was a girl who had been trained alongside another member of Noir before being co-opted by Les Soldats, and was apparently the near equal of the other girl in close combat. It was possible, and as such he would have to consider Chloe to be a lethal threat at all times.

* * *

Once Mireille returned home, she powered up her computer and prepared to do some research. Logging into the MAGI (She had found the revelation that MAGI had been a computer system and not a person to be even more disturbing than what she had originally thought. No expert system can ever be better than the training set that it uses as a baseline, and any system that tried to run something as complicated as a city could never be fully audited and debugged, even without considering the fact that there is no such thing as a universally agreed upon correct answer to a political problem. It seemed like a disaster waiting to happen, especially since nobody seemed to know who had provided the training set to begin with), she wandered through the data sort programs until she found the personnel locator program.

She started by setting it to look up herself. The program returned a file describing the publicly known details of her life with reasonable accuracy. She then entered the name of one of her neighbors from Paris, an individual who she had never really spoken with beyond greetings in passing, and whose name she only knew because it was printed on his mailbox. Four people with that name were located, one of whom was the person she had been thinking of.

Having convinced herself that the program worked, she attempted to look up Kirika's birth name and was not entirely surprised when she found nothing. Looking up Kirika's current name, she found a copy of the poorly forged records that described the life of the girl that Mireille had met in a construction site over a year before, updated to cover publicly known events of her life in the intervening time. Parts of the current data were unreadable, being marked as classified.

Looking up Asuka's file, she noticed that similar parts of her record were blocked. She also noted the names of her aunt and uncle. Then she looked up Chloe's file. The names given for her parents didn't match. If somebody was trying to insert Chloe into Tokyo-3 by passing her off as Asuka's cousin, they obviously didn't do a very good job. Given the resources that Les Soldats had at its disposal, one would think they would be more careful in matching up details. Then again, if they wanted to be convincing, they wouldn't have deleted the records and created new ones, they'd have simply coached Chloe about the originals. Someone might have, and in this case actually did, notice the originals were missing.

Deciding to look at things from a different angle, Mireille looked up Chloe's 'parents'. From the perspective of Chloe's records, there was nothing. The parents mentioned in the file didn't exist. The parents of the Chloe that Asuka remembered did exist. Or rather, they had existed. They had both been killed in a massacre in Austria, along with a number of other people, less than a year ago. Mireille looked at the exact date and place. It seemed familiar. Then it occurred to her.

If Asuka's aunt and uncle had died at that time and place, then they had to have been Soldat agents. If that was the case, then their child could very well have been given over to become Noir. There was a very good chance that Chloe really was Asuka's cousin. Somehow, the people who created her identity for her current assignment had created a fake ID with her real name on it by accident and then sent her to the one place in the world where there was somebody who remembered that identity. The odds of it happening by chance were astronomical, but the only other explanation was that Les Soldats had created Chloe's obviously forged background on purpose. Kirika's background had been poorly forged in order to draw the attention of Mireille, and she had been placed somewhere where it was unlikely that anyone else would bother to examine it in depth. The chances that somebody would delve into the background of a close relative of an indispensable and irreplaceable part of an organization responsible for humanity's survival that appeared out of nowhere were just about certain. They wouldn't make a mistake that stupid.

Also interesting was the cause of death for Chloe's parents. Given the time, place, and cause of death, the identity of their killer was fairly obvious. Maybe she could use that knowledge to her advantage at some point…

On a whim, Mireille decided to look up Rei's file. What she found was very strange. The other pilots whose files she had looked up had occasional blocked off sections in them. In Rei's case, it was more like her file occasionally had sections that weren't blocked off. The only unclassified personal information on her was her description and some basic medical information.

The classifications couldn't all be due to her job, or Asuka and Kirika would have ended up with similar looking files. So why was so much about Rei secret?

* * *

Thousands of kilometers away from Tokyo-3, American technicians prepared the newly completed EVA-03 for transport.

The unit hadn't been fully tested after being completed. The workers didn't care. Nobody was sure what went wrong when EVA-04 was tested, but there was now a crater 178 kilometers across where the testing facility had been. As such, the government and just about everyone who lived near the facility where the other unit was being built wanted the thing gone.

They could have loaded it onto a freighter and shipped it by sea, but nobody in the Navy had wanted to push their luck and run the risk of running into something like the 6th Angel a second time, especially since this Evangelion was being shipped without a pilot. As a result, EVA-03 was being shipped by air. A spare EVA aerial transport plane had been flown across the Pacific to ship the massive robot back to Japan.

The flight was a long one. The plane had to follow the coastline north into Canada, then fly across the ocean at a point where it could cross without running out of fuel before reaching the range of the refueling planes of the airbases on the other side, then follow the Russian coast southward to Japan. This pretty much doubled the length of an already lengthy flight. Even with multiple pilots and a place for one pilot to sleep while the other flew, the flight crew was exhausted by the time they finally reached Japan.

That might have been why they never realized that one cloud that they flew through on the final leg of their journey was far from normal.

* * *

A/N: I figured Chloe has to have some kind of hobby. And if you're looking for an explanation as to how somebody can die on Friday night and show up alive on Monday morning, Highlander is a good a theory as any. It wouldn't work for a story unfortunately, as if Rei was an Immortal, she'd be stuck in the ten-year-old body she had when she was murdered by Naoko for all eternity. Chloe has not seen any movies involving clones at the moment.

Exactly how many of the seven Soldats agents in Tokyo-3 will have actual parts has yet to be decided.

Chloe fires a gun precisely once in the entire anime, and unless you believe Kirika can recover from a point blank head shot between episodes, she did miss at one meter. While that was probably deliberate, not being good with guns would be a plausible reason why Chloe normally uses blades exclusively.

If you want a prime example of how hard it is to get a political solution everyone can agree on, look up the Sejm, or Polish parliament, of the 18th Century. According to their rules, unless every single bill voted on during a session was approved unanimously, everything brought to vote during the session would be rejected. This is the reason why virtually none of the sessions of the Sejm in this time period managed to accomplish anything. Which just goes to underline the key flaw of a computer-controlled government. How can you tell if the program is working properly if nobody can agree on what the correct answer is when you test it?

All the clues needed to identify who killed Chloe's parents have already been given.


	15. The Betrayal of Rei Ayanami

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 15

The Betrayal of Rei Ayanami

Most of the students in the pilot's class weren't sure what to make of the dynamic between the pilots and Asuka's cousin.

The relationship between Rei and Chloe was the same as the relationship between Rei and everyone else in the class: Rei pretty much ignored the other girl unless there was a class-related reason to acknowledge the other's existence. Chloe seemed to be perfectly content with this arrangement.

The relationship between Asuka and Chloe was occasionally argumentative but improving. Thanks to the events of their rather memorable reunion, everybody knew that Chloe's family had moved away from Asuka's shortly before Asuka's mother contracted some terminal illness, and that Chloe had not kept in touch over the years. Efforts to get more information about what had happened between them was hard to get to, as all conversations between the two were invariably in German. The students were occasionally able to get Kirika, the only other German-speaker in the class, to translate those conversations, but Chloe seemed to go to considerable effort to avoid discussing what she had been doing for the past decade in any detail (The only real detail that had been revealed since that first day was that Chloe had spent most of that time at an unspecified boarding school, which Kirika apparently also attended, though she didn't remember it). Despite this, the two were patching up their differences.

Nobody was entirely sure what the relationship between Chloe and Kirika was. Chloe claimed to have known Kirika for ten years from their previous school, though what they ended up studying there was completely unknown apart from swordsmanship (The match between the two, while it had never been repeated, was quickly turning into an institutional legend that would probably outlive the school). Kirika claimed to have known Chloe for one year, and was equally uninformative as to the details of their acquaintance. Chloe seemed to want to spend as much time with Kirika as possible. Kirika wanted to have as little to do with the other girl as possible, only speaking to the other when she had something specific to say to her. Nobody knew what those two talked about in those rare conversations, as they always spoke in a language nobody else knew, and changed languages each time they spoke with each other.

It was clear that Kirika was angry with Chloe about something, but nobody knew what she was angry about. Not even Chloe. The one time anyone had tried to patch things up between them and get Kirika to tell the other girl why she was mad at her so that she could try to make amends somehow, she flatly replied "If she can't figure out why I'm angry with her, then she can't possibly be sorry for what she did."

Nobody had ever managed to get her to tell _them_ why she was angry with Chloe, either.

Shinji and Chloe were forming a tentative friendship. The only thing that the two really had in common that the non-pilots could come up with was that they both had connections to Kirika and Asuka, but it appeared to be working out. Kirika didn't approve, but since she refused to tell anyone what her problem with Chloe was, she was unable to explain why she disapproved, which made it difficult for her to do anything about it.

Chloe wasn't entirely certain why she was so comfortable around Shinji herself. At first, her interest in him laid entirely in the fact that Kirika had stated that she would kill for his sake, and she wanted to know how he had gained that kind of loyalty from. But as the days passed, she was starting to like Shinji simply because he was Shinji.

She had never considered having a boyfriend. Even if she hadn't been interested in Kirika that way, the fact that there were no boys of any age at the manor and the nearest community was a ten mile hike through the mountains made even attempting to get one a difficult proposition. But for some reason, she found herself drawn to the boy. In retrospect, she supposed it was his sense of loyalty that first got her attention. Shinji didn't form attachments to many people, but those people he did bond with could count on him. That was something that she could relate to, given her upbringing and the importance that Altena had always placed on members of one branch of Les Soldats needing to be able to count on members of another branch without ever meeting each other.

This was what led her to be having lunch with Shinji, Kensuke and Kirika – sort of. While all three other parties were having lunch with Shinji, Kirika was making it perfectly clear without words that she was not having lunch with one of the other people who was eating with her brother – namely Chloe.

Chloe was once again going over the events of her encounter with Kirika in China that Mireille could have somehow leveraged into Kirika's sudden and absolute rejection of her when she heard Kensuke bring up the word 'Noir'. She stopped her musing and listened to him.

The events in general were familiar to her. She remembered killing Conrad Zellner, the East German spymaster who had gone on to become a drug lord after the Berlin Wall came down. That had been the only kill she had ever done on her own time. She still wasn't entirely sure why she had done it. It might have been because the man had dared to send assassins out to try to steal her kill (She had actually protected her target from the other assassins so that she could do the job herself later that evening). It might have been because while killing an enemy and his family wasn't that unusual a practice in her world, torturing your enemy's children to death and then sending people after your enemy after he had conceded defeat by resigning his post and leaving the country was a bit much. It might have been an effort to grant some closure for the spirit of the very recently deceased General Dieter Reimann by sending his nemesis to the grave with him. It certainly wasn't out of any obligation to make the world a better place. She just removed those her superiors decided needed to be eliminated; figuring out who needed to die and why was their job.

As the boy talked, she glanced at Kirika and shot her a look that said clearly without words _Does he know that he's talking about us? Or how hopelessly wrong he is?_ Kirika shook her head slightly.

Chloe didn't understand how it could have happened, but the kid had somehow managed to completely miss the point of Noir. It was a name meant to inspire fear, not admiration. Chloe was now actually glad that the note she had left at Ayanami's which identified the killer as Noir had not become public knowledge. The kid in front of her would probably have gone looking to get an autograph.

Chloe wondered what it was that Shinji saw in the fool.

* * *

After school, Asuka went to her cousin's home, while the other pilots went to their own homes. Shinji and Kirika ended up in Mireille's apartment, doing homework together. While they were doing this, Kirika asked a question.

"Mireille," she asked, "why was there a Section 2 team following Chloe and Asuka?"

"After the last few incidents, it's been decided that none of the pilots can go without a protective detail other than your homes, schools, or the GeoFront. It's a security precaution." The other answered.

"But what could a Section 2 team do against anything that Chloe couldn't handle herself?"

"I know, but I doubt they'd believe me if I tried to explain that, and if I did and something happened, the blame would be on my head."

"I thought you said that Chloe wasn't a good shot." Shinji commented.

"She's a terrible shot with a gun." Kirika said, "But if you give her a brace of throwing knives, she can sign her name from the other side of the room."

"But what if she doesn't have a knife?" Shinji protested. "Most people don't take weapons to school."

For some reason, the other two people in the room found that innocent comment to be extremely funny.

* * *

Asuka looked around her cousin's apartment while she went off to pick up a package that was waiting for her at the building supervisor's office. For the most part, it was minimally decorated, and judging by the fact that there were exactly three chairs in the entire place (a one-seat recliner in front of the TV, one at the kitchen table, and one in front of the desk), the decorator had apparently been under the impression that the occupant would be living alone and wouldn't be entertaining.

The most heavily used item in the place appeared to be a dartboard. The metal frame was still shiny-new, but the board itself had obviously been struck hundreds, if not thousands of times. Oddly, though, Asuka didn't see any darts anywhere. Most of the books that Chloe owned appeared to be textbooks, but there were a few that weren't. The only title that Asuka recognized out of the latter bunch was _Alice's Adventures in Wonderland_.

Chloe returned, carrying a thick envelope.

"What's that, Chloe?" Asuka asked.

"Just something that I had ordered awhile back," Chloe said, leaving the envelope on the kitchen table. "Why don't we watch the movie that we got from the rental store on the way here?"

Asuka nodded, then went to move the desk chair to the living room so that they would both have a seat.

* * *

The film that Chloe had rented was one of the seemingly infinite number of B movies about a giant monster that came from nowhere and tried to destroy Tokyo for no adequately explained reason. While the movie probably hadn't been intended to be seen as a comedy, Asuka found it be hilarious, effectively a farce about her job.

After the movie ended, Asuka turned to Chloe.

"Chloe?" She asked, "What was your old school like?"

Chloe paused in thought, and then said, "Busy. I can't recall ever having much in the way of free time. What few daylight hours I wasn't in lessons, training, or studying for lessons I generally spent helping in the vineyard."

"Vineyard?"

"The school had a small vineyard and winery attached to it. Everyone, student and teacher alike, spent some time working there. I know more about grape cultivation and wine making than most people would ever want to know. I wouldn't be surprised if Kirika still remembered all of that, no matter what else she's forgotten."

Asuka wasn't so sure about that. The only thing she'd ever seen connecting Kirika to any horticultural endeavor was that there were a couple of potted plants in her apartment. Of course, whenever alcohol was ever brought up in discussions between the pilots, the beverage in question was beer, and they were usually mentioning that Misato drank too much of it.

"But why didn't you ever write? It was almost like you dropped off the face of the Earth. I didn't even learn about the death of Uncle Max and Aunt Sophie until tried looking for you. Surely you could have found the time to send a message when that happened!"

There was a pause, and then Chloe said "They're… dead?"

"Somebody knifed them in Austria months ago. Didn't you know?"

"No. This is the first time I've heard about it."

That revelation made Asuka pause. Suddenly, trying to probe more information about what her cousin had been doing the past ten years didn't seem to be appropriate. She wrapped one arm around Chloe's shoulders, and the two sat in silence.

* * *

After Asuka had left, Chloe turned her attention to the envelope that had arrived. It was a good thing that she had been able to keep Asuka from paying too much attention to it – had she learned that it contained classified information concerning her job, it would have invited far too many questions.

The news that Asuka had given her was troubling. It wasn't so much the fact that her parents had been murdered – it was that this was the first time she had heard about it, months after the fact. To the best of her knowledge, she hadn't seen, spoken to, or heard from her parents since she began training to become Noir. When she tried to think of her father, she could barely recall anything, and any attempts to recall her mother only brought up images of Altena. For that matter, she hadn't even remembered their names until Asuka had mentioned them and she realized who her cousin was talking about by inference. Why hadn't that seemed odd to her until now? And why hadn't anyone told her about this while she was recuperating at the hospital? And most importantly, who had killed them?

Chloe shook those thoughts from her mind as she removed the thick sheaf of documents from the envelope. The first page was standard government boilerplate about how these documents were only to be read and/or handled by authorized personnel. Chloe ignored it; had anyone been interested in obeying that, they wouldn't have ended up in her hands in the first place, or the hands of the one who sent them to her, or the hands of the one who had sent it to the person who had sent them to her, and so on for several iterations down the line. The following page gave a brief overview of the information she had requested.

_Absolute Terror Field_

_The Absolute Terror (AT) Field is an energy barrier generated naturally by the extraterrestrial entities classified as 'Angels'. This barrier is virtually impervious to conventional weaponry. The only practical method of neutralizing an AT Field is another AT Field. At present, the only man-made artifact capable of generating such a field is the Evangelion, which is based on…_

From that point, the document went into highly technical detail that didn't make much sense to a casual glance. Chloe went back and reread the first paragraph. It hadn't changed. The NERV technicians had called the barrier she had somehow summoned an AT Field. And AT Fields could only be generated by Angels and Evangelions.

Nobody had ever figured out where the Angels were coming from. Was it possible that they infected a person and then slowly took over, warping the host's body into the form of one of those giant monsters as it did so? Was something like that happening to her?

The doctors at the hospital had been decidedly unspecific about what kind of illness she had suffered from. Normal illnesses didn't cause people to change hair and eye color. They also didn't make the scars picked up from years of training and combat to vanish without a trace. But both of those had happened to her.

What was the illness that had incapacitated her for months? How was it connected to ability to use the AT Field? And if the connection was the worst case she had just come up with, did that mean that Kirika and the others would be called out to kill her at some point in the near future?

* * *

Evangelion Unit 03 had finally made it to Japan. The enormous war machine had been delivered to NERV's test facility in Matsushiro to await its activation test. Three people from Tokyo-3 were sent to the facility to take care of this procedure. The first person was Ritsuko Akagi, who was the most qualified person to evaluate the condition of the new EVA from an engineering perspective. The second was Misato Katsuragi, who was the most qualified person to evaluate the capabilities of the unit from a military perspective. And the third was the Child who would presumably become the designated pilot of the unit – Rei Ayanami.

The logic behind choosing Rei for the activation test had been fairly simple. The other three pilots had managed to form a functioning team with the three Evangelions that NERV already had. If anything went wrong in the test with one of them in the entry plug, then that team would be disrupted. If Rei succeeded in piloting the new unit, then NERV's strength would increase and Misato could once again try to integrate Rei with the rest of the pilots. If Rei failed, the existing Evangelion unit would be unaffected. At least that was Ritsuko's logic behind the decision. Misato's reasoning was simpler and less cold-blooded: Since she had three pilots using the three active units, it only made sense to make the pilot who had been shunted into a reserve role pilot the new unit.

Despite the fact that Rei had been involved in two disastrous activation tests already, the two older women had high hopes that Unit 03 would either activate or remain inactive without any complications. These hopes were unceremoniously ruined when Bardiel awakened the moment the unit activated.

* * *

Chloe was still puzzling over the report on AT Fields at what it implied when she felt a strange sensation. It felt similar to what she had felt when she had stabbed Ayanami, but this time it wasn't as clear, as if she was hearing the faintest echo of something far away rather than the thing itself. Ten minutes later, alarms started going off, telling everyone to head to the emergency shelters.

As Chloe headed to the shelter, she felt the sensation of wrongness slowly grow clearer, as if the source was getting either larger or closer. She understood what the sensation meant then. An Angel had been sighted – and it was heading for Tokyo-3.

* * *

Three Evangelions emerged on the outskirts of Tokyo-3. The pilots maneuvered their machines to the designated intercept point. Once there, they took one look at the positions that Commander Ikari had instructed them to take and noticed a major problem with them. Shinji was the first to point it out.

"Aren't we going to be a little far apart to help each other?" he asked the other pilots.

"If the Angel attacks one flank, the fight could be over before the person on the other flank can get to it." Kirika agreed.

"Schiesse! Doesn't anyone at base other than Misato know how to fight a battle? Kirika, take position at the top of the hill. Shinji, head to the west side and find a place half-way up. I'll wait on the road." Asuka barked.

As the three took up their new positions, Kirika mused that Asuka's comment might be the closest anyone had ever come to asking why a scientist who had never served in the armed forces of any nation was in charge of a multi-national military unit. Then they began the long wait for the Angel to come in sight. Unlike most of the other Angels, this one's form wasn't particularly bizarre. Then they realized why this Angel's shape seemed normal to them.

"That's an Evangelion!" Shinji realized.

"Correct." Gendo's voice said over the comm channel. "Unit 03 has been taken over by the Thirteenth Angel. You are to engage and destroy it."

"But what about the pilot?"

"Irrelevant."

"You've never had to turn your weapon on someone that you'd once considered a friend or ally before, have you Shinji?" Kirika asked. "I envy you your innocence."

Shinji froze at that calm, but faintly sad sounding, statement. What had his sister been forced to go through over the years? He didn't get the chance to think too deeply on the subject, because once Unit 03 was close enough to no longer need long-range sensors to view, it immediately attacked.

The sudden change in its pace from a steady walk to a flat-out run caused Kirika to miss her first shot. The Angel charged forward, heading straight for Asuka, its arms stretching out to grab EVA-02's throat and throttle it before Asuka could reach it with her own weapon. Kirika lined up her second shot and fired, striking Unit 03 in the shoulder, blowing off one arm. With the throttling sensation on her throat reduced, Asuka was able to knock the Angel's other hand off of her and take the offensive. Given the blast radius of her positron rifle, Kirika couldn't fire again with Asuka fighting in close without hitting her as well. She stood back and waited for another chance at a clear shot.

The Angel's sudden assault on Asuka ended Shinji's indecision. His teammates needed his help, and that was more important than whoever was supposed to be controlling the rogue Evangelion. He started making his way around the north side of the hill.

Matsushiro was north-northwest of Tokyo-3. As a result of this, the Angel had been travelling down the eastern side of the hill. While the Angel was trying to fend off Asuka with one arm and regrow the other, Shinji managed to get behind the Angel and open fire on its unprotected rear. Unit-03 roared in pain and rage at the unexpected attack. It managed to knock Asuka away, and turned to face Shinji. That was the last thing it ever did. By knocking Asuka out of the line of fire, the Angel had inadvertently given Kirika the opening she needed. Her final shot removed Unit-03's head and much of the armor on its upper back, causing the machine to slowly roll down the hill, crushing several dozen trees in the process, eventually knocking down a power line and tangling with the severed wires.

A call came out from Tokyo-3. "Pattern blue has faded. The Angel has been defeated." Hyuga's voice said.

"Good work pilots. Try to see if you can extract the entry plug from Unit 03. We'll send a team out to recover the Evangelion later." Fuyutsuki said.

With Shinji and Asuka standing ready to smash the broken Unit to pieces if it came back to life and attacked again, Kirika knocked away the power lines with a snapped tree trunk and then removed the entry plug. It didn't look good. Various attacks from the three pilots had breached the plug in several places and dented it in several others. An enormous splinter from one of the shattered trees had gotten embedded in one of them. The odds that whoever the pilot was (They had heard rumors that the Marduk Institute was looking for a fifth pilot, but weren't sure if said pilot had been chosen yet) had managed to avoid injury were very slim.

"I have the entry plug." Kirika reported, "Have a trauma team standing by in the hanger."

It was a good thing the medical team was standing by. By the time the technicians managed to get the pilot out, it was clear that they would be needed. Shinji took one look at Rei's mangled body and was violently ill. Asuka shuddered and quickly looked away. Even Kirika paled at the sight of what had happened to the other girl. Given the brutal nature of her injuries, the fact that Rei was still breathing when she was carted away on the gurney was nothing short of a miracle.

* * *

Doctor Kaede Shimizu gasped for breath as she wiped the sweat off her forehead, then returned to the operating table and the maimed form of what had been a healthy fourteen year old girl that morning. While it was still a fourteen year old girl, Rei was no longer healthy by any stretch of the imagination.

Half of Rei's right hand had been completely incinerated. The only thing holding the lower half of her left leg to her knee was skin. A large chunk of wood had gone straight through one lung. Her spleen had ruptured, and various compound fractures had pierced other organs. To top it off, the girl had been electrocuted, adding burns, nerve damage and heart arrhythmia to all the other problems.

Kaede wasn't Rei's normal physician. Dr Akagi had insisted on handling all details of the First Child's medical care herself for some reason. Why that was the case for the First Child and not the others (all of whom had been delegated to other members of NERV Medical shortly after their initial physicals), Kaede didn't know. But since Dr Akagi was still missing in the wreckage of the Matsushiro base, the task of keeping Ayanami alive fell to her.

Dr Akagi's handling of the First's records didn't make the job any easier. The main point of security preventing random members of NERV Medical from accessing the medical records of any of the other Children were the standard security regulations that prevented any medical professional from examining medical records that they did not need in order to complete their duties. Rei's records were sealed with an astronomical security clearance that nobody presently on the base below the SubCommander possessed, which meant that nobody in the operating room was cleared to look at them, even though they had an indisputable need to know at the moment.

As the surgical team desperately tried to repair the extensive damage done to the pilot's body, it was obvious that access to those records would have been helpful. There were certainly peculiarities with her case. It was common knowledge that Ayanami had been injured three times before this incident in the months since the Angels had started coming, with two of those cases being serious enough to warrant long-term hospitalization. But there was absolutely no evidence that the girl had ever been injured before today. In addition to that, the girl apparently had developed an odd tumor in her lower torso. It wasn't growing on any organ in particular; the strange spherical growth was existing independently as if it was an organ in its own right.

The operation took hours, but in the end, they managed to stabilize the critically wounded girl. As the patient was carted off to the recovery room, Kaede went to wash up before dealing with the most difficult part of the procedure: Reporting the results to Commander Ikari.

* * *

Gendo sat behind his desk, listening impassively to Dr Shimizu's report. Ritsuko (Who had suffered only minor injuries and had just returned to Tokyo-3) listened with him.

"The First Child's right hand was damaged beyond repair and was removed. The same was done for her lower left leg, though in that case we will be able to replace it with a prosthetic eventually. She will eventually regain 60 percent capacity in her pierced lung, but her spleen was a total loss. An oddly spherical growth, which was potentially cancerous, was removed and sent off for a biopsy. Most of her other damaged organs should recover to at least 80 percent, but we will need to watch carefully in case of complications. We pieced together her broken bones as best as we could, but she will likely endure low-level pain for the rest of her life.

"My overall evaluation is that the First Child will live, but I do not believe she will be able to pilot again."

"Thank you Doctor. Dismissed." Gendo said.

As the Doctor left, Gendo cursed inwardly. A crippled Rei was totally useless for his plans, both as a pilot and as a means of dealing with the assassin Angel. And if his suspicions were correct and the 'cancerous growth' that had been removed and sent off for biopsy was what he thought it was, then he couldn't even have her sit back and wait until he gathered the means to initiate Third Impact. That didn't even touch the question of what would happen if some pathologist got the chance to examine an S2 organ.

There was no avoiding it: the current Rei would have to be replaced. In addition, he would have to make certain that no member of the surgical team was able to talk about Rei's true condition, and that the removed S2 organ was either secured or destroyed. Gendo instructed Ritsuko to begin preparations for activating the fifth Rei. Then he contacted some SEELE agents who he knew could be trusted to eliminate a handful of doctors and nurses without asking questions.

* * *

Rei slowly opened her eyes. Her entire body ached, except for her left hand and right leg, which were oddly without sensation. Turning her head, she saw that she was in a hospital bed. Turning her head the other way, she saw the Commander, looking at the IV stand next to her bed.

"Commander." She said softly. He turned to look at her.

"Rei." He replied.

"I'm sorry. I was unable to pilot Unit 03."

"Don't worry about that, Rei." Gendo turned back to the IV stand and produced a syringe. He injected the contents into the IV bag.

For a moment, Rei thought that the injection was something to ease her pain or aid her recovery. Then the potassium chloride hit her system. Her heart started beating rapidly, the sound of her pulse beating in her ears like a bass drum. Looking at the man who she admired above all others, she realized that she had been betrayed.

It was one thing to know intellectually that she could be replaced if anything happened to her. It was another to see herself be deliberately thrown away so that she could be replaced. She tried to reach the IV feed, but her muscles were too weak and she could barely lift her arm. Tears filled her eyes as she tried to ask the Commander why he had just murdered her, but she didn't have the strength to form the words. Then the loud pounding of her heart suddenly stopped, along with everything else.

* * *

The pilots were seated around the table at Misato's place. Shinji thought back on Rei's broken form and shuddered. He had never liked the girl, but he wouldn't wish that kind of brutal fate on anyone. Kirika broke into his thoughts with a comment he definitely didn't expect.

"I wonder how long it will take her to make a miraculous recovery this time?"

"What are you talking about, Fourth?" Asuka yelled. "You can't recover from something like that. It's impossible!"

"That didn't stop her the last two times."

"What do you mean, imouto?" Shinji asked.

"By rights Rei should be dead two times over now. I saw what she looked like after your EVA rejected her. She had broken her neck. You can't recover from an injury like that. Most people can't even survive an injury like that. But somehow, she did."

The other two looked at each other, and then back at Kirika.

"What was the other time?" Asuka asked.

"The attack on her apartment."

"But wasn't Rei only slightly injured from that?" Shinji inquired.

Kirika snorted. "An assassin kills two guards on the way in, and then takes out ten more on her way out. Even if we say the first two were taken by surprise, the others knew they were going into a fight, and had rifles when their opponent only had knives. Do you really think someone that good would not be able to tell whether she had killed her primary target or just wounded her?"

Shinji and Asuka were forced to agree that this didn't add up.

"But what does that mean?"

"I don't know."

Neither of the other two had any more idea as to what it meant than Kirika did. All they could say for certain was that there was something strange about Rei Ayanami.

Asuka later noted one thing. Normally, when talking about a person whose identity was totally unknown, one would refer to that person as 'he', 'he or she' if the one speaking was in the habit of being politically correct. Kirika hadn't done that when referring to the assassin who had attacked Rei. She had used 'she'. Was there some reason why she thought that the killer was female?

Did she have an idea as to who it was?

* * *

Rei slowly opened her eyes. Looking around, she saw that she was floating in a tank of colored liquid. She recognized the tank as the LCL tank in which she had been 'born' and to which she returned for memory uploads every month. A few minutes later, the tank started to drain. Once the tank was empty, Rei exited the tank and headed to a bench where a towel and some clothing had been laid out. Unconcerned by the fact that she was not alone in the room, Rei dried herself off and dressed. Once she was dressed, the Commander addressed her.

"Good morning, Rei." He said.

"Good morning, Commander." She replied.

"I'm afraid we had to activate a new body for you. Let me tell you about what has happened since your last upload."

The Commander started telling her about the events of the previous few months. Her disastrous attempt to pilot EVA-01. The Twelfth Angel. The arrival of the Second's cousin. The attack on her apartment. Then he reached the cause of her most recent death.

"You had gone to Matsushiro to attempt to activate the recently delivered Unit 03. The Unit had somehow become contaminated by the Thirteenth Angel, which took control of the Evangelion. When the other pilots learned of this, they intercepted and destroyed the Angel, damaging the Unit beyond repair and killing your previous body."

So she had been murdered by her fellow pilots. She knew that they weren't fond of her, but she didn't think they would stoop to outright betrayal. She mentally changed her classification of the other Children from coworkers that didn't like her to enemies.

"Given the extent of the injuries that your previous body suffered, it will be some time before you can plausibly be seen by others without drawing attention to yourself. You will be residing in the GeoFront until said time has passed." Gendo continued. "I have a new assignment for you in the meantime.

"We have reason to believe that the assassin who attacked you in your apartment is either an Angel or a Nephilim like yourself. As the only person in NERV capable of forming a discrete AT Field, you are the only person capable of confronting it should it attempt to hide in an area which an Evangelion cannot reach. I would like you to train in combat and AT Field generation in preparation for such a scenario."

Rei considered this. Thanks to the betrayal of the other pilots, it would be months before she would be able to pilot again. Given that she would also be unable to attend classes for this time, it was obvious that she would need some task to keep her occupied. The fact that the task would prepare her for dealing with an enemy who had killed her only made it better. Perhaps when that was done, she could do the same to her other enemies.

The other pilots had tried to strip her of EVA, her only purpose in life. That was an affront she could not forgive. Now the Commander was offering her a new purpose, one that would position her to deal with those that had tried to wrong her so severely. She looked forward to the time when she could do so.

"Understood, Commander."

* * *

A/N: If you've been keeping count, you'll realize that I've killed Rei off in every other chapter for the past six chapters. Before anyone asks, no, she will not be killed off again in Chapter 17. While giving her the Vrumugun treatment was amusing while it lasted, it is no longer necessary for the plot. Rei V is going to have a longer life expectancy than the last two did.

Isn't odd that overall command of a critical military organization such as NERV was given to a civilian? GEHIRN was a research facility, and so could sensibly be put under the control of a scientist, but military types generally insist that military bases be run by a soldier. If that had been done, the canon result of the 13th Angel fight might not have happened. Gendo obviously either hadn't ever heard of the concept of 'defeat in detail' or wanted it to happen.

Chloe having read Alice in Wonderland is canon – as is the fact that Kirika has not. Since they were raised in the same place by the same person, it must be a result of personal taste, rather than upbringing.

I don't know what the Japanese equivalent of HIPAA (The Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act, which among other things establishes how medical records are to be secured and what the process for allowing someone other than the subject's primary physician to see them is) is, but I don't doubt that there is one.

Potassium chloride is used, among other things, for lethal injections, as an overdose can trigger cardiac arrest.


	16. Complications of Surgery

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 16

Complications of Surgery

Chloe walked down the nighttime streets of Tokyo-3, a sack of groceries in her arm. As she traveled, she carefully looked around. She had noticed someone had been following her since she had left the door, and was still uncertain if her tail was a potential threat or just somebody who shopped at the same store and whose home was in the same direction as hers. As she passed a glass storefront near a streetlight, she slowed slightly and glanced into the makeshift mirror. The person following her was a woman in her mid-thirties, carrying two large grocery bags. She also looked vaguely familiar. She might have been one of the other people to live in her apartment building. Chloe hadn't paid any of them much attention once she realized that none of them moved as if they had any sort of combat training, nor did they possess the kind of calluses that came from such training, either armed or unarmed. Satisfied that the woman couldn't attack without noisily dropping at least one of the bags, Chloe continued on her way.

When she reached the outside of her apartment building, something felt off. A casual glance around the entrance quickly revealed the problem. She knew where the shadows normally fell around the building, and several of them were darker than normal. That meant that something – or someone – was inside the shadows, blocking more light than usual. And people didn't normally stand in the shadows outside a person's home at night unless they didn't want to be seen for some reason – usually a reason that didn't bode well for the person living there. Chloe's right hand slowly slid to the brace of throwing knives she kept on her back.

* * *

The SEELE agent lurked in the shadows. He and his team had had a busy night. Orders had come from higher up that a group of NERV employees had to be silenced, and so they were eliminated one at a time. Four of the deaths had been made to look like muggings (They had also killed five randomly chosen people not on the list in 'muggings' to keep anyone from discovering a connection between the victims). Two of the deaths had been poisoned in ways that simulated heart failure. One had had a nasty fall. The bodies of three more people would never be found. Only one person was left on the list: a Doctor Kaede Shimizu.

The only reason she hadn't been killed was that she hadn't been at home when the person assigned to deal with her first arrived. Not knowing where she was, he had settled in to wait. Eventually, the remainder of the team had joined up to tie up the final loose end.

Two people approached the building. One of them was the target. The other was a teenaged girl. He didn't know who the girl was, but it wasn't important. If the girl was inside the building before the attack started, she would live. If not, she would be another person killed in a 'mugging'. It didn't matter to him either way.

As the girl approached, she slowed, apparently fishing in a back pocket for her keys. It looked like she wouldn't find them and get in before they moved in on the doctor. It looked like the kid wouldn't be making it home this night – or any other. Tough luck, but that was life. He signaled the rest of the group and they moved in on their victims.

* * *

Kaede's arms were getting tired. She had needed to get a lot of groceries, and the store was five blocks away from her apartment. The sight of the girl who she recognized as living down the hall from her was a bit of good fortune. If she could arrive at the apartment building at the same time, she could get through the front door without having to put down the bags, open the door, and pick the heavy bags up again.

But before anyone could open the door for anyone else, five people walked out of various shadows. Each of the men was armed. Kaede froze. This couldn't be happening. Tokyo-3 had a very low crime rate, most of it centered on a totally different part of the city. Then she realized that their posture held no threat in it, simply cold intent. These men weren't here to rob – they were here to kill.

The moment after Kaede realized the purpose of the five men, there were suddenly only four of them. The fifth had fallen to the ground, a slim knife embedded in his eye. The men all turned their gaze to the girl, who had dropped her bag and pulled several more blades from somewhere. A second man fell with a knife to the heart. A third man was close enough to attempt to strike the girl, but she caught his arm, spun inside his guard, stabbed him in the groin, then kicked his feet out from under him, leaving him to bleed out from a severed artery. Another knife throw downed the fourth man.

The final man hesitated for a moment upon seeing how swiftly his companions were taken down. That was a mistake. A moment later, he was knocked to his knees, and a dagger was being held to his throat.

"Who sent you?" The girl demanded in a soft voice.

"S-SEELE!" the man gasped.

"SEELE? Interesting. And what exactly were your orders?"

"We… We were told to kill everyone on a list in a way that nobody would draw a connection between them."

"Oh? And who else was on the list along with me?"

If Kaede hadn't already been in a state of shock from the slaughter she had just witnessed, that would have put her there. Her neighbor apparently had enemies willing to send killers after her, and her only reaction to learning this was mild curiosity as to who else was being targeted. Did she consider mortal peril to be routine? Then again, that might explain why she carried concealed lethal weapons when shopping for groceries.

Something about the weapons the girl was carrying seemed familiar. Kaede wasn't sure what, though.

"Y-You weren't on the list. We were sent to kill Dr Shimizu."

The shopping bags dropped from Kaede's arms. These men had come to kill her. And if it hadn't been for the good fortune of having returned in the company of an unexpectedly deadly neighbor, they probably would have succeeded.

"And who else were you sent to kill?"

The man started reciting names. Kaede listened with horror as she recognized every single one of them as belonging to a colleague in NERV Medical. Why was this happening?

The girl with the knife also apparently wanted to know that. But the man kept stating that he didn't know why he had been sent to kill those people, only that he was to do it. After the fifth time he stated that, the girl took the dagger away from his throat, and then slammed it into the base of his skull, severing the spinal cord.

The girl turned away from the dead body and looked at Kaede.

"Doctor Shimizu, I presume?" She asked. Kaede nodded dumbly.

"Get to your apartment and start packing. Be back here in ten minutes."

"What?" Kaede asked.

"SEELE will undoubtedly have more agents in the area then this. Once they fail to report in, another group will be sent. And if they find you, they will kill you. If you want to stay alive, you'll have to come with me."

"W-Why?"

"Is this happening? I don't know. But my enemies want you dead, so I intend to keep you alive. You may know something I can use against them."

Kaede didn't have the slightest notion as to who or what SEELE was, or what she might know that would cause him, her or them to want her dead. It was like she had woken up in a nightmare. Kaede ran to pack some clothes. Ten minutes later, she was back. There was no sign that there had been a fight. Kaede shuddered again at the memory of what she had just experienced and followed the girl whose name she did not know into the night.

* * *

There were advantages to being in a city that had pretty much been designed and built from the ground up over the past decade or so rather than one that had been evolving with the times over generations. One of these was the utilities were all designed to handle the needs of a city its current size efficiently from the start, rather than having had extensions installed whenever the load increased beyond the currently specified maximum size. At this time, the utility that Chloe was interested in was the garbage disposal system.

All of the city's (non-biohazardous) burnable garbage was disposed of in one enormous incinerator. This incinerator was filled by dump trucks that simply emptied their loads down a massive intake shaft. That meant that since garbage pickup for her neighborhood was very early tomorrow morning, nobody would ever examine the contents of the dumpster behind the apartment building before it was emptied into a truck, and from there into the incinerator. By the time anyone found the five cremated skeletons, nobody would know who had put the bodies in the garbage or where, thus destroying all usable evidence concerning how they had met their fate. Dr Shimizu had made it back by the time that Chloe had finished disposing of the bodies. Chloe waved to the woman to follow her and headed off into the night.

Les Soldats had set up several alternate residences for use as safehouses across Tokyo-3. Chloe led the doctor to one of them, far enough away from her residence that she wasn't likely to run into any of her former neighbors. When they reached their destination, Chloe noted that the older woman was still too much in shock to be able to provide much useful information at the moment. Chloe let her take the bed and try to get some sleep, while she took a guard position near the door and dozed off herself, confident that the doctor would not be able to sneak past her without waking her up.

* * *

At the same time that one team of SEELE agents was meeting its end at the hands of a young girl, a second team was breaking into a pathology lab in Tokyo-2. They had been ordered to track down and destroy an experimental cell culture that had been smuggled out of a NERV lab as an excised tumor in need of a biopsy. The stolen culture had apparently been shipped to the lab in order to make the cover story about its removal plausible, and was intended to be removed from the lab by the (already disposed of) thieves at some later point.

The men found breaking in to be childishly simple. Somebody in the lab was apparently working late, and as a result, the more advanced security systems had yet to be activated. All that was keeping intruders out was an electronic lock that they had no trouble disabling and a guard who was quickly silenced. The intruders then went to search for the records so they could make sure that they had secured their objective.

The pathologist in the lab was performing a large number of increasingly exotic tests on a spherical lump of red tissue lying in a petri dish. He was so focused on the specimen he was examining that he didn't notice a man slowly walk up behind him and strike him on the back of his skull. The doctor slumped to the floor, unconscious.

The intruders then scoured the records within the lab. They were pleasantly surprised to discover that the specimen they had been sent to destroy was in the dish lying on the lab counter. After destroying the tissue in the lab's biohazard disposal incinerator, they also noted that the results of some of the earlier experiments performed on the cell culture had been recorded in the lab's computer system. In order to destroy all traces of the specimen, they would also have to destroy the computer.

Two of the men started to subtly sabotage the lab's sprinkler system. Another started rummaging around the shelves in the lab to track down flammable chemicals to spill around. A fourth man began tampering with a power outlet. Within minutes, a fire had broken out in the lab, reducing the computer to a ruined mass of metal, plastic and charcoal. As the fire spread to destroy the entire building, the SEELE agents tossed the body of the guard into the inferno, and then left. With virtually every tissue sample in the lab damaged or destroyed by the fire, nobody would realize that one specific sample had been destroyed on purpose. And the loss of all the records in the lab would make it impossible to realize that the purpose of the fire was to get rid of one set of records. Everybody who investigated the incident would think that it was an ordinary electrical fire, with two men killed as a result of it, rather than two murders and an act of arson.

Their job done, the team sent a mission accomplished message to their superiors and went their separate ways.

* * *

Kaede woke up slowly. She had had a terrible nightmare the night before. Some shadowy organization had killed several of her colleagues, and had tried to kill her. She had only survived because a member of a second organization had thought the killers were after her and killed them. Now she was on the run, not knowing who wanted her dead or why. But that was all a dream. She was perfectly safe, in her own room… Kaede froze as she realized she didn't recognize the room she was in.

This was not her room. This was not her home. Glancing around, she saw the bag which she had frantically packed with clothing after the attack. Last night hadn't been a dream. It had actually happened.

Kaede quietly walked into the main area of the apartment. The girl from the other night was there, sleeping against the wall. Kaede had barely taken three steps when the girl's eyes snapped open and she swiftly turned towards her, a knife in her hand. Kaede swiftly backed up, holding up her hands in an effort to look as nonthreatening as possible. A moment later, the girl recognized her and put the weapon away.

"You shouldn't try sneaking up on a guard," The girl said. "It can be dangerous to your health."

"S-Sorry" Kaede stammered.

"Are you willing to talk about why SEELE wants you and those others dead?"

"I don't know. I'd never heard of this SEELE before last night!"

"SEELE doesn't send out death marks all that often. You are either in a position to harm their schemes, or know something that they want to keep secret. I want to know which it is."

"But I'm just a doctor!" Kaede protested. "I don't know any of NERV's secrets! I don't know what some people I've never heard of would want to murder a surgical team for!"

The girl's eyes narrowed on that comment. "Surgical team? NERV? You and the others all worked for NERV's medical division?" Kaede nodded. "Were all of you working together on a project recently?"

Kaede thought about that. She didn't know about the others, but she certainly hadn't been working on any special projects lately. And the only thing she had worked with all the others on was…

"We all worked together on an emergency operation two days ago. That's the only thing I can think of."

"On who? And for what?"

Kaede considered whether or not she should say any more. Patient information was supposed to be confidential. On the other hand, it seemed that this SEELE group would be trying to kill her whether she respected this or not. If that was the case, then the only possible way out of this mess was to help her rescuer as best as she could, and hope that the other girl could hurt SEELE enough so that she could return to her life.

"Rei Ayanami was seriously injured in the last Angel attack. Her regular physician was out of town, so we were called in to treat her."

The girl became more interested when she heard that name. "Ayanami? Hmm… Perhaps they don't want any details of whatever miracle procedure you people are using to keep her in perfect health whenever she gets injured from getting out."

"What are you talking about? I'm still amazed that we managed to keep her alive at all. As it is, she'll never pilot again and will have to relearn how to walk."

"I'm talking about the one that allowed her to survive multiple kidney failures and make a complete recovery over the course of a weekend."

 _Multiple_ kidney failures? Losing one kidney could be easily fatal if the patient wasn't treated quickly. Losing both in what was apparently a very short period of time was pretty much a certain death sentence. When had Rei gone through _that_? And how had she survived _at all_ , let alone recover over a weekend?

"Are you sure that happened?" Kaede asked, not wanting to believe a medical impossibility.

The girl pulled a dagger out of her sleeve. "Quite certain."

Kaede mentally measured the knife. Comparing its width against the average width of an adult kidney, it looked like it could do critical damage with one strike. Adjusting for the fact that Rei still had one growth spurt ahead of her before she would reach adult size, and the dagger could practically cut her kidneys in half. Between that and whatever other organs got damaged by the blade's passing, such an injury to both kidneys would almost guarantee a quick death. Yet there had been absolutely no evidence that such a thing had happened when she had operated. Then the implication of the girl's statement registered.

The girl knew that Rei had suffered critical injuries because she was the one who had caused them. There had only been one time that Rei had been in the hospital for a weekend and then released – right after she had been attacked in her apartment and received "minor injuries that looked worse than they were". During that attack, twelve Section 2 agents had been killed, most of them by knives which by the wounds they made were similar in shape to the ones that the girl in front of her carried. Kaede was looking at the person who had murdered a dozen people in cold blood. Kaede backed away in fear.

"Y-You're the one who killed Captain Arima!"

"If you are speaking of one of the men who tried to rescue Ayanami, he has only himself to blame for his fate. I gave them the option of saving themselves. They chose to challenge me. I do not kill for sport."

Kaede bolted from the room. The nightmare from the previous night hadn't ended. Her savior was a cold-blooded killer who had murdered people she knew. And her salvation was more of an imprisonment. If she left the place she was now, she would likely be hunted down and killed by more of the men she had encountered last night. She didn't have the slightest idea what might happen to her if she stayed. She huddled into a corner of the small bedroom and shivered in terror.

* * *

Chloe watched the woman flee and sighed. There would be no more information out of the doctor until she had calmed down, and that could take hours. Fortunately she seemed to realize that leaving would put her in more danger than staying.

Chloe went out and picked up some food to stash in the safe house. When she returned, her guest was still hiding. Chloe put away the food and left. If the woman couldn't bring herself to leave the bedroom and feed herself, that was her own problem. Chloe then went to get some more food to replace the groceries that had been ruined in the fight the night before, taking care to go to a different store so as not to be recognized.

So the people that SEELE had wanted eliminated were all doctors working for NERV. And they had all been treating Ayanami for some crippling and potentially fatal injuries she had recently suffered, as her usual doctor hadn't been available. Two possibilities came to Chloe's mind. First, they were targeted to ensure that nobody other than this usual physician would have access to Ayanami's medical data. Second, they targeted so that nobody would know the true extent of Ayanami's injuries, so that when the usual doctor somehow made the girl have a miraculous recovery, nobody would know that what had happened was impossible. Or both – the possibilities were hardly mutually exclusive.

If the first case was the reason, then it was probably connected to whatever enabled Rei to produce the AT Field she used to block her dagger. That was something Chloe really wanted to know, as she suspected her own AT Field existed for the same reason. While it was doubtful that Dr Shimizu knew the answer to that question, even unknowingly, she might know something that would tell Chloe where to search.

Getting that information was going to be tricky, though. Chloe had never really been trained in how to interrogate someone except at knifepoint. A properly trained interrogator would have been able to get more information out of the woman without her panicking. As it was, she might not be able to get her to talk more at all. She would have to find someone else to handle that end for her.

There was one more thing to be concerned about. Kirika was fully aware of the fact that Ayanami was in the habit of making miraculous recoveries from potentially deadly injuries. She might be interested in finding out why. And if she did that, then SEELE would identify her as an enemy. Chloe had every confidence that Kirika was more than a match for any individual killer that SEELE could come up with, but any individual, no matter how skilled, can get pulled down by a large enough group if that group is willing to take casualties. And being able to protect yourself from any kind of direct confrontation is no help against a less immediately obvious assault – like a bomb.

Even though Kirika was mad at her for some reason (And for the life of her, Chloe couldn't figure out what that reason was), Chloe still cared for Kirika, and hoped that they could reconcile at some point in the future, before Kirika took her current anti-Soldat stance to the point where they would have to face each other on a battlefield. The least she could do was warn her that probing too far into what was going on with Ayanami would bring her to the attention of a second organization.

* * *

Gendo looked at the report he had received from one of the two teams he had sent out. The 'tumor' that had been extracted from the previous Rei had been located and destroyed. That was good. There was no longer any risk of some doctor learning something he shouldn't while trying to biopsy an S2 organ. One potential means by which the scenario could possibly be unraveled had been destroyed.

He had yet to receive a report concerning the other team, but he wasn't worried about them. Earlier that day, he had received a 'send to all' email from Section 2 warning about some unidentified criminals who apparently liked to kill those they robbed. Several of their victims so far were NERV personnel. Every single NERV employee to be killed in a robbery turned out to be on the list of people that Gendo had wanted eliminated. Gendo concluded that this was the means by which the team was silencing the surgical team before they could talk about Rei's condition after the operation or any of her medical peculiarities to anyone.

With that out of the way, Gendo could focus on the revised version of his scenario. Since Rei had been seen getting carted away for emergency surgery, she was due to have another long 'recovery period'. During that period, she would have her belongings transferred to an apartment in the GeoFront. A section of labs near that apartment had already been cordoned off for a series of experiments concerning AT Fields. As a result, Rei would be able to travel there with relative ease, and any AT Fields she generated in those labs while training for her new assignment would be considered to be part of the experiments and be ignored by the staff manning the bridge.

It looked as if the scenario was finally starting to return to its intended state.

* * *

Breffort looked over the most recent report that Chloe had sent him. There was only reason in his mind as to why SEELE would want the physicians who had treated Gendo's imitation Noir to be killed within a day of her being wounded, especially given the crippling nature of the girl's injuries. Gendo had decided that his weapon was too damaged to be used anymore, and discarded it to replace with a new version, and needed to destroy all evidence that Ayanami's recovery was impossible.

This discovery was a fortunate chance. An attempt on doctors who were treating an (apparently) irreplaceable part of humanity's defense against the Angels could be considered an indirect attempt on the life of the defender in question. Evidence of something like that could disrupt SEELE's position thoroughly enough that he could unseat them from the positions of power that members of that group had been assuming over the past two decades.

It was a pity that Chloe had killed the assassin she had interrogated; he could have been used as part of that evidence. But Chloe had been trained to fight, not maneuver in the complicated world of politics. The man had been a potential threat, so she had eliminated him after he had told her what she wanted to know. That mindset made Chloe a useful weapon, but made her unsuited for any role other than that of a tool for her superiors. Altena might have looked on the concept of Noir with the religious fervor of someone who actually believed the claptrap that was written in the Langumal Manuscript, but he knew better. Noir was a weapon created to serve Les Soldats, nothing more.

Still, she had done well to realize what she had stumbled into and know that she didn't have the skills needed to pursue the one remaining lead. Looking though his records, he realized that none of the agents in place around Tokyo-3 were particularly skilled in interrogation. He would have to send an agent from elsewhere to interview this Doctor Shimizu. As Breffort began composing his reply, he started considering who he should send to handle that task.

* * *

As Mireille headed out to pick some things up after breakfast, she noticed a newspaper had been stuffed in her mailbox. Since she hadn't subscribed to any newspapers since coming to Tokyo-3, the paper was rather obviously out of place to her, though most other people in the building would not have noticed, as a lot of people had the morning paper stuffed in their mailboxes. A quick examination proved that it wasn't connected to any sort of booby trap, and that there were no immediately obvious objects concealed inside the paper. She stuffed the paper into her purse and went on with her chores.

When she got back, it didn't take her long to notice something else that set that particular paper apart from the papers everyone else was getting: The neighbors were all getting the morning paper for the day. She had received the evening paper from the night before. Then she started reading the paper to see if there was any kind of hidden message inside. She found the message on page four of the local news section.

It was an article on the murder/robberies that Section 2 has posted a warning about. Scattered across the article were slight markings where someone had penciled in dots just below a seemingly random collection of letters. Mireille wrote them all down and then looked at the result:

**HOWSAYANAMI**

Ayanami? What did she have to do with those deaths? Intrigued, Mireille flipped through the paper some more in the hopes of finding a second message. She found that in the obituary section. The obituaries for the robbery/murder victims that worked for NERV all had their names underlined, along with three other names. The other victims all had small x marks next to their names. A second message in dots was scattered across the underlined names:

**BEWAREOFSEELE**

So SEELE was connected to the murders somehow. And both had something to do with Rei Ayanami, the girl who wouldn't stay dead. Interesting… But who had sent the message?

As Mireille wondered about that, she noticed a couple extra markings on the page, and another two on the front page. Putting the marked characters in order and adding punctuation, the whole message read:

**K-**

**HOW'S AYANAMI?**

**BEWARE OF SEELE.**

**-C**

There was only one person in Mireille's household that K could have been. And from there, identifying C was a trivial task. Chloe must have been really annoyed by the fact that she couldn't send this message to Kirika without also sending it to her.

But what was the connection between Rei, SEELE, and the murders? And how did Chloe find out about it? Mireille resolved to find out.

* * *

A/N: Yes, I am aware of the fact that none of the pilots showed up in this chapter, except by reference. This chapter is mainly to set up things for later.


	17. Another Mad Tea Party

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 17

Another Mad Tea Party

Mireille sat at a desk in the GeoFront, ostensibly working on some paperwork, but actually examining the list of names that was listed in the message that Chloe had passed on. One quick data search revealed one thing that all of the underlined names had in common, that the x marked names did not – every one of the names in that obituary with underlined names was a NERV employee. To be more specific, they were all employees of NERV Medical.

Now why would SEELE need to eliminate a group of medics? NERV's medical facilities didn't have anything that you couldn't find in any other hospital. In fact, there were quite a few pieces of medical equipment that NERV's hospital didn't have, as someone had decided that a military hospital didn't need to worry about certain branches of medicine, cutting the budgets for those areas in favor of increasing its capacity for handling the kind of health problems that can potentially happen in a battle. One would think that someone who worked with either the Evangelions or the MAGI would be more likely to run into something that SEELE would want concealed.

But the message also implied that the deaths were connected to Ayanami… Mireille looked up some duty rosters. The deceased had all been part of the on-call emergency room team at the time of the attack of the 13th Angel. This meant that they would have been the ones who would have been treating the First Child after she had been extracted from the remains of EVA-03. They must have discovered something about the girl that SEELE wanted kept secret.

Kirika had assumed that since Ayanami was absolutely loyal to the Commander that she was an agent of Les Soldats. From that assumption, one could conclude that Chloe's attack on Rei's previous residence to be an internal Soldat matter. But if that was the case, then Chloe would most likely have known about the other girl's ability to recover from seemingly fatal wounds from her superiors and been told how to get around this. But Mireille now knew that Commander Ikari was working with SEELE as well as Les Soldats. What if they had gotten it wrong? What if Ayanami was the Commander's agent in his persona of a SEELE operative? That would explain why the Soldat Noir sent a message connecting Ayanami to SEELE.

Going from that revelation, the incident at Ayanami's became a conflict between Les Soldats and SEELE. This implied that the two organizations were not in perfect accord with each other, despite the Commander's connections with both organizations. Did the two groups know of Gendo's links to the other? Which group was he loyal to? Was he actually loyal to either of them, or just playing them against each other for some goal of his own? That would be an impressive accomplishment, considering how consistently Les Soldats eliminated those of their agents who they discovered working against their interests.

But how did Chloe discover what SEELE had done? Looking over the duty roster more closely, Mireille realized that while all of the deceased were on the team that would have treated Rei, they were not the entire team. Four names on the team were not on the list. Another check revealed that none of those four had shown up for work since the night their colleagues were murdered, even though they all had at least one shift scheduled. Chloe must have encountered the killers while they were going after one of those four. That meant that the person whose murder Chloe interrupted could very well still be alive.

Which of the four was still alive? And what did that person know about Rei that SEELE so desperately wanted to be hidden? Mireille left to find Kaji. There was only one way to find out, and this was something that Mireille could not do herself.

* * *

 

Kaji stood in the alleyway outside the school and waited. He had done a number of extremely dangerous things in his career as an intelligence officer without cover, but today's task, deliberately tailing a world-class assassin, would be the most dangerous by far. He understood the reasoning behind Mireille asking him to do it instead of handling the task herself: she and Chloe knew each other on sight, and disliked each other immensely. Had Chloe spotted Mireille following her, she would have known something was up. The only way to successfully tail Chloe would be to use someone she didn't know, and hope she assumed that the person walking behind her was just someone that was heading in the same general direction as she was. There were often a large number of people on the streets in a city the size of Tokyo-3 in mid-afternoon. So long as he mixed with the crowds and made a point of changing part of his appearance from time to time, he should be able to go unnoticed. But he did leave a report of what he had learned and what he was planning to do at a dead drop, just in case.

The first part of his tailing mission was to spot Chloe without being spotted by Asuka. If his former ward spotted him, she would likely latch on to him for the rest of the day, making it impossible to follow the other girl. Heck, she might even introduce him to Chloe, which would make the job completely impossible. Tailing someone who can recognize you is always more difficult than following someone to whom you are just another face, even when the person you are tailing isn't in a profession where paranoia is considered an essential job skill.

Fortunately, Mireille's job as security escort for the Children placed her in a position where she could divert Asuka's attention from where he was hiding. With that taken care of, he scanned the crowd of children, searching for Asuka's cousin. It didn't take long to spot the only redhead in the school that wasn't Asuka. Kaji waited for a minute to establish some separation, and then he went in pursuit.

Chloe's path took her in a direction that took her away from her residence, and wound through several shopping districts, glancing at various storefronts through their windows as she passed. While a normal person would assume that the girl enjoyed window shopping, Kaji knew better. She was heading somewhere specific, and traveling through places that contained several large reflective surfaces so that she could check to see if there were people behind her without being conspicuous about it. Kaji ducked into alleyways every other street and used every trick he knew to change his appearance slightly each time, taking care to undo the changes of the previous disguise before adding the new changes. By the time the girl reached her destination, he had at various points changed his hair color through the use of a wig, altered the shape of his face by inserting cheek pads, attaching a fake nose and artificial facial hair of various lengths, reversed his coat, and then removed them all at points later on.

Eventually Chloe came to a small ice cream parlor. Kaji leaned against a wall, pretending to read a newspaper as he watched her sit down at the counter and order a milkshake. A few minutes later, the man sitting next to her asked her to pass some napkins from the dispenser next to her. Had Kaji not been watching closely, he would have missed seeing Chloe slip something into the napkin before passing it over, which the man palmed before wiping his face and getting up. Recognizing a handoff when he saw one, Kaji focused on the man who was leaving. Deciding that whatever information Chloe had about the incident concerning Ayanami and her murdered physicians was now in the hands of a man who was undoubtedly much less dangerous, he started following him.

The man wasn't nearly the expert in counter-surveillance that Chloe was. He had hardly gone a block before he fished whatever he had received from the girl out of his pocket, glanced at it, and then set out in a specific direction. Kaji managed to tail him easily. After walking perhaps half a mile, the press of people on the streets gave Kaji a chance to do something he wouldn't have dared try on Chloe. He managed to walk up alongside the other man, and while he was being pushed by people on all sides, planted a small microphone on him. If his hunch was right, this man had met with Chloe because of the murder of NERV medical team. He could very well be going to meet with the person whose murder Chloe interrupted.

The Soldat eventually went to an apartment complex. Kaji followed him carefully, then watched from the stairwell as he walked up to a specific door, pulled a key from the same pocket he had pulled Chloe's message from, and went in. Kaji leaned against the wall and started to listen in to what the planted microphone was picking up.

* * *

 

Kaede had spent most of the weekend in a state of panic. She had nearly been killed by a group she knew nothing about, and been rescued by a member of a second group she knew nothing about, who bluntly admitted to also being willing to kill NERV employees if it suited her purposes. She wasn't sure if her current location was a safe haven for her or a prison. She was too afraid to figure it out by attempting to leave; even if she did, she didn't know where she would go to.

For most of the time since coming to this place, she had been alone. Apart from the girl showing up to deliver some food, she had been undisturbed. Which is why she was surprised when she heard the tea kettle start whistling. She hadn't been making tea. She cautiously walked into the kitchen to see a man at the table pouring two cups of tea.

"Good afternoon, Doctor Shimizu," The man said. "Please sit down."

"W-Who are you?" She asked.

"I am an associate of the young lady that saved your life a few nights ago. I'd like your help in figuring out what they were after you for."

"I already told everything I knew to the girl."

"My colleague might not have noticed everything of importance when you told her. I'd like to go through things with you again. Once we know what we're dealing with, we can get you to a more permanent safe location and work on ensuring the people responsible for this face justice." With that, the man took a deep drink from his cup of tea and refilled it.

Kaede sat down and took a sip of the tea. The warmed beverage calmed her for some reason. For the next two hours the man questioned her about her work at NERV and what had happened to Rei Ayanami. As the man questioned her, he kept refilling her tea cup. As time passed, she grew more and more at peace with what was going on and spoke more and more freely. Finally, the man set down his cup. Kaede stared blankly at it. Funny. She thought she had seen him sipping from it several times, but the cup was still full.

"Thank you for your time, Doctor," The man said, straightening. "But I'm afraid you haven't told us anything that would justify us leaving you alive. You don't know anything that would allow us to use you as a witness against SEELE, and we can't allow outsiders to know of Les Soldats if they are of no use to us." With that, the man pulled a gun out of an inside coat pocket.

Kaede's eyes widened in shock. She tried to get to her feet and run, but her body responded sluggishly and she simply stumbled to the ground. As she tried to get off the floor, she realized that the tea she had been drinking had been drugged. But how had the man been able to drink that first cup without being affected…

The man aimed his gun at her. Kaede closed her eyes and waited for the end. There was an odd swishing noise, followed by a metallic clacking noise. But no pain came. Kaede opened her eyes, and saw her attacker fall to the ground, revealing a poorly-shaven man holding a gun standing behind him in the open doorway.

* * *

 

When Kaji heard the man he had followed talk about killing the woman, he knew he had to act. Luckily for him, the man had neglected to lock the door, so he had been able to break in easily. Putting away his silenced pistol, he looked at the Doctor. She appeared to be alright; apart from a look in her eyes that was part terror and part chemical-induced haze. He closed the door, hoping that nobody else on the floor knew what the sound of an automatic's slide working was. A silencer couldn't cover up that noise.

Kaji looked at the nearly empty teapot and realized how the man had drugged her. He had heard the man pour something, then drop something into liquid, then pour something else. He must have poured one cup of tea, drugged the rest of the pot, and then poured another cup. Then he could drink one cup to show that there was nothing wrong with it, when in truth there was something wrong with all of the tea except for what he had just drunk. Since truth serums were essentially sedatives that made the taker more likely to talk and less able to come up with convincing lies, the Soldat had been able to get the Doctor in a state where she was unlikely to be able to withhold information when he questioned her or flee when he decided to eliminate her – and been able to get her to administer the drug to herself while he was at it. Very clever technique.

Searching the man, he found a tape recorder that was still recording. He turned it off and pocketed it. The only other things of note on his person were his gun, the key to the apartment, and a note holding the address of the apartment. Kaji pocketed them, along with the man's ID and the bug he had planted earlier. A quick search of the rest of the apartment revealed nothing else of interest.

Looking back to the woman on the floor, Kaji saw that the sedatives she had been tricked into taking had fully taken hold, rendering her only semi-aware of what was going on around her. That actually made getting her out of here easier. He pulled out his cell phone and dialed a number.

"Hello, Ishigawa Cab Services?" He said as soon as someone answered the call. "I'd like to call a cab so that I can get a friend home." He then gave the address.

Ten minutes later, a cab pulled up outside the building and he received a call saying that his ride had arrived. Kaji helped Doctor Shimizu to her feet, guiding her as if her mental state has due to an excess of wine rather than a more sinister drug, then took her out of the apartment, locking the door behind them. He led the woman to the ground floor and the waiting taxi, and then the two of them got in.

There really was a company called Ishigawa Cab Services operating in the Tokyo-2/3 area. The number that Kaji called wasn't for that company though. The number he had called belonged to a JDA Intelligence operative. The request for a cab had actually been a request to have a safehouse ready to hold someone that needed to get away from the area and bring a vehicle to perform a quiet extraction. The cab the two had entered was that extraction vehicle, taking the two out of the city and the immediate search radius of those who might be looking for the woman.

* * *

 

Rei frowned in disapproval as the pen slipped out from between her fingers for the fifth time. While she rarely felt the need to express her emotions, she found the current exercise she was undergoing to be… frustrating.

Rei had always used her right hand as her primary hand. This came from the fact that all of the people that she interacted with used that hand as her primary hand, and as such she assumed that was how things were supposed to be. But the injuries her previous body had received when she had been murdered by the other pilots included serious damage to that body's right hand. That injury had been seen by several people when the body had been retrieved. As a result of this, Rei would be forced to pretend that the right hand of her new body was also injured once she was no longer 'under medical observation', and was teaching herself to do things left-handed so that she could plausibly maintain the deception.

This self-imposed task was more difficult than it had first seemed to be when she had realized that it would be necessary. Years of muscle memory told her that she was right-handed, and that could not be set aside in an instant. While some clumsiness could be explained away by that very fact, a subconscious urge to correct that clumsiness with a hand that was supposed to be crippled could not. She kept finding herself trying to pick up the pen she had dropped with her left hand with her right, which would not be acceptable behavior once she was out among those who were unaware of the fact that her current body was uninjured. The wheelchair to conceal her ostensibly crippled leg was much easier to deal with.

Rei still got upset when she thought about the other pilots. For her entire life, she had known that she existed for a specific purpose: to pilot Evangelion. The existence of other pilots was something she noted, but hadn't considered overly important at first. There was nothing wrong with other people having a purpose in life similar to hers; the objectives given to the pilots were not mutually exclusive, so all of the pilots could fulfill their purposes adequately. The other pilots didn't appear to care for her, but that wasn't particularly important to her. But that was when there was only one pilot per Evangelion.

Rei couldn't remember being put on the reserve pilot list, as it had happened between backups in her previous bodies, but she found the thought unpleasant. Only being allowed to serve her purpose if someone else was unable to do it for her diluted the reason for her existence, lessening her. That was reason enough to disapprove of the Fourth Child as far as Rei was concerned. The fact that the other pilots had seized on the 13th Angel's attack as an excuse to seek her destruction at the very moment when her previous self had been about to reclaim her purpose was something she could not forgive.

As Rei contemplated the wrongs done upon her by the other pilots, she heard a cracking sound. The sound gradually increased until she abruptly felt something wet drip onto her hand. Looking down, Rei saw that the pen that had been in her hand had somehow been completely crushed, reduced to shards of plastic and a leaking ink reservoir. But she hadn't clenched her hand or done anything else to damage the pen physically. She must have somehow compressed the writing implement with her AT Field.

This had the potential to be useful, both in fulfilling her new purpose and in her desire to express her displeasure to the other pilots for their attempt to rob her of her old one. As Rei realized this, she smiled.

* * *

 

By the time that the cab had reached its destination, the sedatives that Doctor Shimizu had unknowingly taken with the tea had fully taken effect. Kaji had to carry the unconscious woman out of the car and into the safehouse. After he had put her down on a couch, he turned to face the other person in the small residence, a senior official in the JDA.

"I take it that this is the person you needed extracted?" The man calmly asked.

Kaji nodded. "She was targeted by SEELE operatives. She only survived because the assassination was interrupted by a Soldat agent. They interrogated her about why SEELE wanted her dead, and then they decided to kill her themselves."

"Really?" The officer raised his eyebrow "What did she do that would make both groups want her dead?"

"She discovered something about Rei Ayanami that Commander Ikari doesn't want other people knowing about. Or at least, Ikari thinks that she might have, and decided to have her and everyone else who was with her at the time eliminated just in case." Kaji went on to describe what he knew about the incident.

"I see… We'll have to debrief her and see what turns up."

"I'd be careful about that. The last person to debrief her nearly killed her the moment the debriefing ended." Kaji pointed out. "I managed to get his recording of the questioning. We can use that as a starting point." Kaji produced the effects of the man that he had killed.

"Hmm… I see your point. Do you have any notion as to why that Soldat agent sent that message to a person she considered an enemy?"

"Not really. From what I was told, Ms Langley sent the message to Kirika Yumura, not Mireille Bouquet. Her opinion of the former seems to be different than her opinion of the latter. It simply wasn't possible for her to send the message to one of them without the other also receiving it.

"I don't know what is going on between those three. It probably has something to do with Noir and their previous clashes with Les Soldats. Since they don't know that we know about that, we can't ask about that. However, I get the feeling that sooner or later that issue is going to come up again, and when it does, I wouldn't want to be caught in the crossfire."

The other man nodded. The JDA had identified enough of the incidents in which those three had been involved in to know what they were capable of. So far they had only identified four killings by Noir where they left any survivors, counting the one which involved the woman currently sleeping on the couch, and besides the failed attack on Ayanami, all of them were because they had been acting to protect the person they left alive. In situations where they were simply planning to kill someone, they had only left bodies to tell the tale. Stepping into a fight between them sounded like a suicidally foolish mistake.

* * *

 

There were several tests coming up in the next week, and as a result the students were scrambling to catch up on all the studying they should have been doing all along, as well as learning the things that should have been covered in class but weren't because the teacher had decided that he would rather talk about Second Impact… again. As their duties at NERV took up a great deal of time that other students would theoretically be using for schoolwork, the pilots were in the group that needed to do some catching up – for reasons that were far more excusable than those of most of the other people in that group. As a result, the active-duty pilots had gathered for a study session after school. Asuka had invited Chloe to join them, to the unspoken but highly visible disapproval of Kirika and Mireille.

Shinji was still confused about what was going on between his sister and Asuka's cousin. The calm, quiet girl clearly considered Kirika to be an old friend, but Kirika wanted to have as little to do with her as possible. It was clear that the younger girl didn't have the slightest notion as to what had caused Kirika to consider their friendship to be over, and the confusion was slowly tearing Chloe apart. Was it some sort of unintentional affront, something that Chloe just didn't see as harmful? What sort of accidental wrong could cause such an abrupt change in a relationship? What did Kirika remember whenever she thought of Chloe that caused their friendship to end? Given Kirika's amnesia, it had to be a fairly recent event.

As most of the group started pulling out textbooks and deciding which subject they should be going over first, Kirika rummaged through the kitchen for snacks. As the girl started serving drinks, Chloe smiled.

"You always did make excellent tea, Kirika." She said.

"And now we've gathered for another Mad Tea Party." The other replied.

Shinji and Asuka exchanged a confused glance. The phrase 'Mad Tea Party' seemed familiar to Shinji for some reason, but he wasn't sure what. The term seemed to have some private meaning for Chloe, as the girl giggled softly.

"Did you remember that from the last time we met like this, or did you finally break down and read the book?"

The term had come from a book? That might explain why he found it familiar. Shinji tried to figure out the precise reference, but Asuka beat him to it.

"You mean you've never read Alice In Wonderland? I thought that was one of those children's stories that everyone read or watched at some point."

Chloe shook her head. "Of course not. Kirika never reads for fun. She was never told to read the book as an assignment, and since it's fiction, it wouldn't teach her anything about a skill she'd want to learn."

Now that he had been reminded of it, Shinji recalled the literary reference to the Mad Hatter's Tea Party, though he didn't know why his sister would find a connection between that and a study session with Asuka's cousin. He hadn't known that about Kirika's reading habits, though when he thought about it, he hadn't ever seen her reading anything that wasn't either a schoolbook or something from NERV. The statement was even arguably true about her childhood, though that could have been due to a more simple reason: Back before the two were separated, they had been four years old, and had considered books whose contents were on the order of 'See Spot. See Spot Run' to be advanced reading that they couldn't get through without their mother's help.

The group settled down around the table. Shinji saw Chloe visibly flinch as she looked at her place at the table. Puzzled, Shinji looked at the place and couldn't see anything out of the ordinary. It wasn't until they had been studying for half an hour that Shinji realized what was different from the spot where Chloe was sitting and everyone else's.

When Kirika had laid out the snacks and dishes, she had apparently forgotten to give Chloe a fork.

* * *

 

The study session wound to a close. Asuka got to her feet and stretched. As the others at the table did the same, Asuka saw Mireille move from the spot where she had been leaning against the wall and approach her cousin.

Asuka had never figured out what had gone on between her cousin and her bodyguard. Practically the first thing that Mireille had said to Chloe was a statement that she was disappointed that the younger girl wasn't dead. Since then, Mireille had watched her cousin continuously whenever they were together, as if she was half expecting her to pull a knife on her. Asuka would have shrugged that off as the same kind of paranoia that had caused the woman to consider Misato's morning beer cheer to be a cry of distress, if it wasn't for the look in Chloe's eyes whenever she looked at Mireille. That look gave Asuka the impression that Chloe would dearly love to knife Mireille for some reason. She didn't know why. This made the woman's attempt to address the girl that she had been eyeing as a threat all afternoon rather unusual.

"Chloe," She said conversationally, "I hear your parents were killed recently."

Asuka fumed. She knew those two didn't like each other, but taunting someone with a family tragedy was a low blow. Especially since Chloe had only learned of her parent's murder the week before.

"Now hold on!" She yelled. "You can't just…"

"I was just wondering if she wanted to know who had killed them." Mireille calmly interrupted.

Asuka, Shinji and Chloe all stared at the woman.

"You know?" Chloe gasped.

It was Kirika who answered. "Mireille and I were in that area at the time when it happened. It wasn't that hard to figure out."

"Why haven't you told the authorities about this?" Shinji asked.

"None of the proof we have could possibly stand up in court." Mireille answered. "But since Chloe had been kind enough to tell me the name of the person who killed my parents, it seems only fair that I return the favor."

Asuka hadn't known that Mireille's parents had been murdered. From the look on his face, neither had Shinji. But something was off about this. If Chloe had done Mireille a favor that large, what was with their mutual animosity? And there was an odd look on Kirika and Mireille's faces. Like they knew that Chloe wouldn't like what they were going to tell her – and that they were going to enjoy her displeasure.

"So, do you want to know?" Mireille asked. Chloe nodded. Mireille leaned forward and whispered something into Chloe's ear. Chloe's eyes widened in horror.

"That can't be possible." Chloe said, though her tone seemed to imply that she was trying to convince herself more that anyone else.

"Every person to fall in that time of trial was killed by one of three people." Kirika flatly stated. "Each of those people used a different weapon. If you want to know who killed who, all you need to do is match the wound to the weapon that caused it."

Chloe grabbed her bag and bolted from the apartment.

Kirika turned to Mireille. "I think we've gotten Chloe back for that revelation about your parent's deaths, don't you?"

Gotten her back? It sounded like they considered Chloe telling them who killed Mireille's parents to be an affront that needed avenging instead of a favor in need of repaying. What in the world had gone on between those three?

"GOT HER BACK?" Asuka demanded. "Did you two make something up just to hurt her?"

"Of course not, Asuka." Mireille said. "Why would we bother lying when the truth is so much crueler than anything we could possibly make up?"

* * *

 

Chloe ran back to her home. It wasn't possible. It just wasn't possible. The person who killed her parents couldn't possibly be the one that Mireille claimed. Surely that person couldn't have done it.

But a quiet voice in her mind pointed out that it was plausible. Kirika had phrased her parent's death as a trial. If their death had happened as a result of the Trials, it wasn't only plausible, it was likely. Her parents had been loyal Soldats. If they had been ordered to go to that place and attack the Saplings as part of the Trials, they would have. And any of the Saplings would kill first and ask questions later if they were attacked, not caring who the attacker was until after the battle was done, if ever.

But why would Les Soldats do that? Everything she had been able to discover about her biological parents indicated that they weren't fighters. They wouldn't have stood a chance against any Noir as an individual, much less all of them at once. Sending them out was tantamount to asking them to commit suicide, with the threat of execution if they refused to go out and die.

Chloe didn't remember telling Mireille who had killed her parents, but she had found the perfect unpleasant truth to exchange for that unpleasant truth. Even now, she could still hear Mireille's soft whisper in her ear, telling her something she didn't want to believe, but was quite possibly true.

"The person who killed your parents… Though I do not know her real name… Is currently known as…

Chloe Langley."

* * *

 

A/N: Don't bother scouring the fic to find the previous 'Mad Tea Party'. That happened in episode 11 of Noir, "Moonlit Tea Party", which takes place before the events of chapter 1.

Doctor Shimizu will return at some later point. However, her being relocated, being questioned some more, and receiving some much-needed psychiatric care won't contribute to the story very much, so she's getting shuffled off into the background for now.

That's right, Chloe killed her parents. Or, more accurately, Chloe I killed her parents at a point after the memory download that was put into Chloe II was made. This would arguably make the current Chloe innocent of that charge. I don't think situations like this have ever been considered in an actual law case, mainly because it isn't likely to happen in real life.

Yes, you can tell who killed who in a Noir battle by looking at the wounds. With Chloe it's easy, as she doesn't use a gun. With Kirika and Mireille you have to examine the bullet wounds closely. Mireille's gun uses 9mm parabellum rounds, while Kirika's fires .380 ACP.


	18. Hunted

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 18

Hunted

"Alright," Asuka demanded, "What is it with you two and my cousin? Why are you trying to hurt her?"

Shinji and Pen-Pen flinched away from the erupting German. Mireille and Kirika didn't even blink.

"Why don't you ask your cousin?" Mireille flatly countered. "She's the one who started it."

"What do you mean by that?"

"Chloe and Mireille never liked each other." Kirika said. "With all the attempts on our lives that we had fought off, Mireille just never could bring herself to trust Chloe. I don't know what Chloe had against Mireille. But it was Chloe who decided to escalate things.

"The woman who ordered the death of Mireille's family turned out to be the same person who had ordered all the murder attempts on the two of us over the year we were living in Paris. But the person who actually killed them was somebody that Mireille knew and trusted. Chloe knew this, and told her about it in as painful a manner as she could arrange."

"And what do you have against her?" Asuka asked rather coldly.

Kirika's response was like ice. "She tried to hurt Mireille. That's all the reason I need."

The other pilots took that statement in. After months of random speculation among all the observers to it, the source of the feud between the three women was revealed. Shinji wondered what the source of the dispute was on Chloe's side. It was obvious that the loss of Kirika's friendship was hurting her, and it seemed that the only way that Kirika would be willing to trust Chloe again would be if she was willing to give up her grievance with Mireille.

Shinji resolved to see if he could find a way to resolve the fight between Chloe and Mireille. From what Chloe had said, she had been friends with his sister for a long time, and given how much Kirika had already lost of her past, he didn't want her to lose that beyond recall as well.

He didn't catch the fact that Kirika never mentioned the names of Mireille's parents' killer – or the killer of Chloe's parents either.

* * *

Chloe tried to wrap her mind around the things that she had learned that day. When had she told Mireille the identity of her parents' killer? She knew exactly who had done it – she had been there, after all – but she had been carefully husbanding that knowledge for the proper moment, knowing that it was the single greatest weapon she could use to destroy the Corsican.

She had planned out exactly what she would do with that little secret, and what should happen afterwords. Step One: Reveal to Mireille that Kirika had killed her parents and older brother. Step Two: Mireille attacks Kirika to get revenge. Step Three: Kirika kills Mireille in self-defense (The thought that the interloper could possibly beat Kirika was laughable). Step Four: With her rival dead, Chloe could safely make her move on Kirika.

But somehow that hadn't happened. Mireille and Kirika were still together despite the revelation. If that hadn't been enough to drive a wedge between the two, what would?

Looking over what few facts she had been able to gather about the death of her own parents, Chloe had been able to verify some of what she had been told about that incident. Kirika claimed that she and Mireille had been there, and that all of the deaths in that area were caused by three people. It was easy to assume that two of those three were Kirika and Mireille, then. This was supported by the fact that the bodies that had been shot were killed by bullets of two different calibers – calibers that fit Mireille's Walther and Kirika's Beretta perfectly. That seemed to substantiate the fact that they were witnesses to the death of her parents, just as she had witnessed the death of Mireille's. Those people who had not been killed by bullets had all been killed with knives. Knives which were about the same size as her throwing knives.

It was entirely possible then that she had killed her own parents, and not even realized what she had done. One thing bothered her… the date of her parent's deaths was after the beginning of the time she was hospitalized. How had she managed to kill her parents in Austria when she was unconscious in a hospital bed in France?

On the other hand, Mireille had apparently learned that Kirika had killed her parents from her. Chloe knew as an absolute certainty that she had not told her that when they had met in China and that had been the last time the two had encountered each other before her hospitalization. There was no way she could reveal that while unconscious in a hospital bed, either.

Things weren't adding up. Either she had gotten ill later than the doctors had told her and she had somehow blanked out the time between participating in that odd experiment and the start of the illness, or what Kirika and Mireille had told her was an outright fabrication. It was obvious that somebody was lying to her.

The question was, who?

* * *

The next day at school, Shinji approached Chloe.

"Why don't you like Mireille?" He asked.

Chloe paused to think of the correct answer. She had many reasons to dislike the older woman. There was the fact that she had managed to become closer to Kirika in a matter of months than she had in years of trying. There was the fact that she couldn't finish the trials and become Noir in truth so long as the other woman lived. There was the fact that Mireille was directly involved in the death of Altena. All of them seemed to be valid reasons to want the Corsican eliminated in her mind.

Unfortunately, Chloe couldn't really discuss any of those reasons. Accusing the guardian of an Evangelion pilot of murder would cause all sorts of complications, even if she had proof that would stand up in court, which she didn't. Making any statement linking herself to Noir in a place where that fool Aida could overhear it was practically asking for him to leak it to the whole world. And admitting what Kirika meant to her to her brother was something she just wasn't comfortable doing.

"It's… rather complicated." She answered. "Why are you asking?"

"Because your fight with Mireille is the reason why Kirika is angry at you." He said. "If you can make up with her, Kirika might be willing to give you another chance."

That statement made Chloe pause. Had it been her desire to remove her rival that had poisoned Kirika against her? Why would she side against the one she had known longer when the animosity between the two was mutual and had been since the night they met? Chloe had known Kirika since the night she made her first kill. Mireille was just the outsider who should have been eliminated with her family on that same night.

But if that was the case, then the two things that Chloe wanted most in life were now mutually exclusive. She could not complete the trials and officially become Noir while more than two Saplings lived. She had no intention of dying herself. She absolutely refused to consider killing Kirika. That left Mireille as the one that had to go. But if her dispute with Mireille is what turned Kirika against her, then eliminating the Corsican by any means that could ever be traced back to her, ever, would lose her Kirika's regard forever. And if the only way to return to Kirika's good graces was to set aside her dispute with Mireille, then that by definition would leave three Saplings still living. With three Saplings still alive, all hopes of any of them claiming the title of Noir would be put on hold indefinitely.

Noir and Kirika… Chloe could only gain one by sacrificing the other. What was she to do?

* * *

Kirika watched her brother talk with Chloe. Despite her best efforts, she had not been able to get Shinji to understand that the other girl was dangerous and should be avoided. She'd hoped that deliberately slipping the fact that she was an expert knife-fighter who was always armed to him would get him to understand that. But he just didn't get it. Kirika could understand Asuka not picking up on any of the hints she had been dropping – most people wouldn't want to think of a close relative as a threat. Shinji was just being clueless about this.

Kirika couldn't see any reason why a Soldat would be focusing so much on Shinji for anything concerning NERV. The only thing that the pilots knew about NERV that wasn't common knowledge for NERV personnel was how to pilot. Besides, the Commander had been one of them for at least ten years, which meant that they probably knew everything they wanted to know about NERV already. Even if there was something, it would have been easier for Chloe to get whatever she needed out of her cousin.

With that possibility eliminated, the most likely explanation was that Chloe was interested in Shinji because of her. That was not something that made Kirika feel at ease. Chloe had shown herself to be willing to kill a friend of hers once before, and could very well try to do so again. Having a friend murdered to get at her once was more than enough. She refused to have that happen to her again.

Given Chloe's relation to one of her coworkers, Kirika couldn't take any direct action. But that didn't mean that she couldn't reinforce a message that she had sent a few months previous that had apparently been forgotten. As the bell rang and the students all returned to their desks, Kirika passed Chloe and softly whispered in her ear.

"Remember what I told you before."

* * *

Sirens blared throughout Tokyo-3. Another Angel had been detected, causing yet another state of emergency to be declared for the region. The civilian population made their way to the emergency shelters, which sank into the GeoFront as the city's defenses rose from the ground.

The Angel had managed to get very close to Tokyo-3 before being detected. By the time the city had finished converting over into fortress mode, it was practically on top of it. The various defense batteries opened fire on the invader, with the same negligible affect that they had had on every other Angel to get within their range. The creature that would later be labeled as Zeruel in NERV reports ignored them, and turned its gaze towards the ground.

The GeoFront was separated from Tokyo-3 proper by twenty-two thick layers of armored bulkheads, each of which was made of an alloy far stronger than the armor plating of a warship. The blast of energy that came from Zeruel's eyes tore through eighteen of them in a single shot. A second blast punched all the way through the armor to the GeoFront below. The Angel then proceeded to widen the breach. Within ten minutes, the gap in the armor was large enough to fit the Fourteenth Angel's massive frame, and it started to slowly descend.

The moment the first hit struck the armor, it was obvious to Misato that the Angel would be inside the GeoFront well before the Evangelions could be in position to engage it on the surface. She ordered the pilots to deploy inside the GeoFront and destroy the Angel there.

* * *

Kirika dialed in the massive positron rifle that she had taken as her preferred weapon when piloting. According to the briefing the pilots had received before launching, the Angel's target was something concealed within Terminal Dogma, the permanently locked down facility deep beneath Central Dogma, the building that held NERV's Command and Control center. The briefing didn't specify exactly what the Angel would be going after, but Kirika suspected it had something to do with the crucified Angel that Kaji had discovered down there.

Kirika didn't know what NERV was doing with the Angel they kept locked in the basement, or what the other Angels wanted to do with it. Nobody in the command staff had volunteered that information, and none of the pilots were really in a position to ask. If any of them had, they probably would have gotten a stern questioning as to how they knew, and then been told that the information was only distributed on a strict need-to-know basis.

The problem with that argument was that the pilots needed to know. NERV had the lowest teeth-to-tail ratio of any military organization in history. While NERV employed thousands of people worldwide in its bases, there were only four front-line fighters in the entire organization – one of whom had been taken off field duty due to a combination of medical reasons and a shortage of equipment. Everyone else was support staff. As the only people who would be doing any actual fighting, the pilots needed to know everything possible about their enemy's goals and motivations as possible, so as to best know what they were likely to do and how to counter it. It wasn't as if the pilots could be replaced on short notice, or that they would have the option of launching a counteroffensive if the Angels managed to break through.

Whatever the reason for its arrival, the Angel had arrived, and the pilots would have to deal with it. Kirika was positioned on a direct line between the breach in the GeoFront's armor and Central Dogma. Shinji was to her flank, getting into a position where he could put the Angel under enfilade fire once it was in range. Asuka was looping around behind the Angel. They didn't know what the Angel had for close-range capabilities, but its long-range abilities could take her out well before she could close for close combat. Since it apparently could only fire those energy blasts in the direction it was facing, Asuka was trying to outflank it and attack from a direction it couldn't shoot her from without taking its attention away from the other Evangelions.

As Kirika took aim, she noticed something odd. The Angel had paused after it had finished descending down the hole it had created, but now it was moving in a straight line towards a specific point. But it wasn't heading towards Central Dogma. For some reason, it was heading for somewhere else.

* * *

Zeruel surveyed the underground valley that it had entered. It had felt the call of its father and had come to this city to find it. The Lilim had tried to stop it with their weapons, but they were barely capable of inconveniencing it on its quest. It simply ignored the attacks as it blasted through the walls that the Lilim had placed in the ground and entered the place that the Lilim had guarded so fiercely.

As it gazed upon the pyramid that rested on the far side of the hidden valley, it felt the call that had brought it to this place. But at the same time, Zeruel felt a second call. As it considered this, it realized that the call that it had felt when traveling to this city had been a fake. Adam was not in the pyramid. But Adam was in the valley. Zeruel could feel the call of its father beckoning to it.

The Fourteenth Angel turned away from the structure known as Central Dogma and started floating towards the location where the First Angel was actually hidden.

* * *

As with the previous Angel attack, Chloe had felt the sensation of wrongness that she had detected coming from Ayanami when the girl had manifested her AT Field long before the alarms sounded. This time, she had recognized the sensation for what it was and was heading in the direction of the shelter before anyone else knew that there was a need to go there. The moment the shelter sank beneath the surface, the sensation stopped, as it had in the previous battle. Apparently there was something in the armoring that formed the 'ground' of Tokyo-3 that blocked AT Fields.

Chloe still wasn't sure how she or Ayanami has gained the ability to form AT Fields. She didn't know the source of her ability to sense them, either, but she surmised that this had come from the same place. She suspected that both had something to do with the illness she had caught after helping with that experiment months before, but she didn't know enough details about either to seriously judge. On the off chance that Rei had suffered a similar illness (And had the details of that illness documented properly), Chloe had ordered her Soldats contacts in NERV to try to track down the other girl's medical records. If SEELE was willing to murder anyone who contributed to them other than Ayanami's regular physician, there had to be something fascinating in them.

Her musing was interrupted by a sudden feeling washing over her. The feeling that she now recognized as that of an AT Field being somewhere in the area. The feeling was much stronger than she had ever felt before. That meant that the source of the field was either much stronger than the previous ones, or it was much closer, or both. Seconds later, the sensation intensified. After a few moments, she realized that the sensation was now coming from multiple directions. She was feeling four AT Fields, not one. Three of them were stationary. The fourth was moving away.

Then one of the stationary sources started moving. It appeared to be moving in the general direction of the shelter that Chloe was in. No, wait… it wasn't heading in the general direction of the shelter, it was heading straight towards it. As it continued to approach, Chloe slowly made her way towards the emergency exit. For some reason, she had a very bad feeling about this.

* * *

"Command, this is Unit 00. Target is breaking off. It is now moving northwest." Kirika reported over the communication window.

Technicians throughout the bridge of Central Dogma scrambled about and confirmed the new data.

"Northwest? What's down here to the northwest of where that thing came in?" Misato mused to herself. Her question had been rhetorical, but her staff worked to answer it anyway.

"Major!" Makoto reported, "The Angel's current course is taking it directly towards emergency shelter 19!"

Misato paled. She had thought that the Angels were only interested in locating the _thing_ that Kaji had discovered hidden within Terminal Dogma and using it to trigger Third Impact. Now it appeared that they weren't above causing few atrocities on nearby civilians while they were in the area. Well, this one wasn't going to be allowed to do that. Not on her watch.

"Pilots!" Misato barked. "The Angel is attacking one of the emergency shelters. You are to intercept and destroy it as quickly as possible. Any delay could mean civilian casualties. MOVE!"

From his perch at the rear of the bridge, Gendo quietly smiled. There was only one reason why the Angel would ignore the bait that he had laid in the form of Lilith – it had detected the presence of Adam within the assassin that had killed his security chief and the third Rei. With a little luck, he might be able to identify this person. Then, all he would have to do was send Rei out to eliminate him once the time was right. With Adam seized, his scenario could be completed.

It was nice to see things returning to the way they should be after all of the setbacks he had received recently.

* * *

The pilots started repositioning themselves before Misato's orders finished coming out of her mouth. Kirika was the first to successfully get into a new position, mainly due to the extreme range capabilities of her weapon. Carefully leading her target, she fired off a shot. The blast of energy caught the creature in the side, leaving a smoking hole in its torso as the Angel shrieked in pain. Before she could get off a second shot, the seemingly vestigial arm of the Angel shot outwards, stretching out to strike at the Evangelion that had wounded it from halfway across the valley. Kirika managed to dodge the strike, but the paper-thin arm sliced into her rifle, severing half of the barrel. Kirika tossed the now useless weapon aside and fell back to get a new weapon.

The wounded Angel continued on its way, only to be stopped in its tracks by the explosion of two large rockets. Evangelion Unit 01 blocked the Fourteenth's path, wielding a pair of rocket launchers. Learning from what had happened to Kirika, Shinji strafed the Angel, not staying in one place long enough for the Angel's arms to strike him.

The missiles that Shinji rained down upon the Angel struck home, but the Angel apparently had a skin that acted as a second layer of armor within its AT Field. The explosions failed to harm the Angel, and as it tried to fend off the purple behemoth, it gradually made its way towards the shelter. Finally, just as Shinji ran out of ammunition, it decided that it was close enough to its goal and extended its arms towards the shelter and the civilians within.

* * *

Chloe had just made it to the door when she heard the crashing noise. Looking back, she saw the far wall get smashed in by an enormous grey… something. Someone screamed, and everyone panicked. Chloe bolted out of the door and then threw herself against the wall. Immediately behind her came a mob of panicking civilians desperate to get away from the shelter before it collapsed on their heads. Once enough of the mob had passed that Chloe was in no danger of being trampled to death, she also fled the area.

Once she had made it two hundred meters from the shelter, Chloe felt one of the AT Fields starting to move towards her. It was the one that had been right in front of the shelter when it started coming apart. She supposed that meant that it belonged to the Angel. Presumably it was going after the various people who had been in the shelter. She was on the edges of one of the groups that had fled the area.

Moments later, the same grey something that had smashed into the shelter appeared in front of her, slicing completely through several people. It then wrapped around several other people in the group and retracted. Chloe looked back to see the Angel retract what was apparently an arm, briefly examine its catch, then casually crush the people in its grip and toss the broken remains away. Other people who had turned to watch resumed screaming, and the group scattered.

Chloe saw a forest in the distance and headed for that. She could sense that the Angel was still heading in her direction, and she wanted to have someplace where she couldn't easily be spotted. Running from a fight wasn't something that she normally did, but she didn't have the slightest notion where an Angel's vitals were, and doubted that she could throw a knife that far even if she knew. There was no way she could kill that thing, so the only option available to her was to get away.

Other groups around her ended up getting snatched and crushed. Chloe ignored them and kept running. Once she was deep enough into the trees, she paused to catch her breath. As she panted for air, she felt the Angel continue towards the forest and her general location. Suddenly the Angel's arm sliced through several trees.

While others had made it into the forest, none had been in Chloe's immediate vicinity. That fact made Chloe come to a chilling realization. The Angel hadn't been randomly killing people. It hadn't been choosing a group of people to slaughter that kept happening to be the same group that Chloe was in. The Angel had been hunting one specific person. The Angel had been hunting _her_.

Chloe didn't know why she was being hunted, but knew it must have something to do with why she had an AT Field. For the first time in her life, Chloe knew the absolute terror felt by someone who knew that someone far more dangerous than they had marked them as prey and that there was nothing they could do to stop it. For the first time in her life Chloe understood what the people on the other side of her knife must have felt before the end.

Before the Angel could launch a second attack at her, the Angel was knocked away by an enormous red robot. Chloe took advantage of this distraction to flee. Hopefully the Evangelion would be able to take the Angel down so that Chloe could live long enough to figure out what was happening to her.

* * *

Asuka had turned her slow flanking of the Angel into a run when she heard Misato report that the Angel was attacking an emergency shelter. When she saw the Angel start butchering civilians, she increased her pace to the fastest she could get her EVA to go. As the Angel started tearing apart the forest to track down survivors, she slammed into it in a massive shoulder check. The Angel went flying, crashing to the ground. Asuka went charging after it as the Angel tried to get back up.

Asuka drove the spear that she carried into the Angel's core. But before it could connect, an armored shell snapped over the core. The spearhead slid off the shell, scraped off the thick hide of the Angel, and drove into the ground. The Angel's eyes then suddenly lit up.

The girl that Asuka had been when she first came to Tokyo-3 probably would have frozen in shock that her brilliant move had been countered so easily and been blasted. But that was before she had met the Fourth Child and been forced to go through what Kirika considered a 'light workout' several times a week. Kirika Yumura had had her combat skills honed in life-or-death struggles, and it showed. In her mind, there was no such thing as a move too vicious, dirty, or underhanded if it allowed you to walk away from a fight in one piece. She had taken that mindset with her into Asuka's close combat lessons, and Asuka quickly learned to be continuously on guard if she wanted to be able to leave the training ring as something other than a solid mass of bruises. That lesson saved Asuka's life.

Asuka threw herself to the side, rolling away from the Angel. The blast the Angel had been charging flew upwards, shattering one of the submerged buildings. Asuka continued her roll until she was certain that she was clear of the falling debris. She succeeded in getting herself clear, but not the Evangelion's power cord. Asuka jettisoned the pinned-down cord and returned to the fight, pulling the spear from the ground as she did so.

The Angel launched one of its arms at Asuka. She sidestepped the blow, spinning the spear so that the arm ended up wrapped around the shaft. She then pivoted the spear so that the edge of the spearhead cut into the extended arm. One sharp pull and the spear cut through the limb, removing the arm completely. The Angel bellowed in pain and rage.

Asuka took the offensive, stabbing and slashing with her spear. But no matter what she tried, the spear would not penetrate the Angel's torso. It seemed that the Angel's skin was made of something that simply couldn't be penetrated by most weapons. The only thing that had pierced it so far was that shot from the Fourth's positron rifle… Asuka dodged to the side and thrust the spear into the open wound that Kirika had inflicted. The Angel bellowed in pain again, and Asuka tried to force the spear in deeper.

Suddenly, the Angel spun, causing Unit 02 to lose its grip and go flying away. As Asuka climbed to her feet, she heard a warning beep and realized that she was down to fifteen seconds of power. Even if she managed to get back into the fight, she wouldn't have enough time to do anything useful before her Evangelion shut down. Checking her sensor suite, she saw that the other two pilots had rearmed and finally managed to get around the milling masses of panicking civilians who were running around aimlessly and nearly getting stepped on for their troubles. Asuka opened a channel.

"I'm almost out of power." Asuka told the others. "You'll have to finish it off. The only place it can be hurt is in the wound in its side. One of you will have to draw its attention while the other hits it from the flank."

Asuka was barely able to receive an acknowledgement from the other pilots before her unit powered down.

* * *

The two remaining pilots split up. The Angel was slowly turning in place, as if it was looking for something. Given the grotesque fate of the civilians that it had gotten a hold of before Asuka intervened, it was probably looking for more victims. Shinji raised his rifle and opened fire to draw its thoughts away from committing more atrocities.

The Angel turned to confront its new attacker. As it did, it turned its wounded side towards Kirika, who fired into the open wound. The Angel spun towards her, firing a blast from its eyes as it did so. Kirika tried to dodge, but her low sync ratio worked against her. Her timing was off, causing the burst of energy to shear off one of Unit 00's legs at the knee. The Angel then readied itself to finish off its crippled opponent.

Shinji saw red. His sister was in danger. He emptied his rifle into the Angel and charged. As he closed, he swung the empty rifle like a club, hitting the Angel in the head, spinning it around. He grabbed the spear that Asuka had embedded in the Angel's side and started forcing it in farther.

The Angel fired at him, blasting off EVA-01's left arm. Shinji pressed on, driving the spear in farther. The pain didn't matter. The only thing that was important right now was that his sister needed him. He hadn't been there to protect her when all those people tried to kill her while they were separated, but he was here now, and he was not going to fail her. He pressed onward, ignoring the screaming agony that came from an arm that believed that it had just been crudely amputated.

As he forced the spear deeper in, the pain increased, as did his determination. All of Shinji's thoughts were focused on destroying the thing that tried to kill the only living relative that Shinji still considered family. As he continued in his grim task, the only sound he could hear was the pounding of his heart in his ears. Then he heard a second sound. The sound of a second heart, beating in perfect time with his.

* * *

The view from the bridge was grim. An unknown number of people, probably numbering in the hundreds or more, had been butchered by the Angel. EVA-02 was out of power, and there was no way they'd be able to get a vehicle carrying a new power cord to it without the Angel noticing and destroying it. EVA-00 was crippled. The only remaining Evangelion was currently engaged in a brute force match of endurance against the Angel, and nobody was sure who would drop first.

Maya's voice called out in the silent tension. "Pilot sync ratio is spiking rapidly! Synchronization is 100%...150%...225%...300% and still rising!"

The bridge crew watched in awe as EVA-01 released its grip on the spear and ripped off the Angel's remaining arm. It then placed the Angel's arm on the stump where its own arm had been and the severed limb somehow attached itself and reformed into an Evangelion arm. The Evangelion then ripped the spear out of the Angel's body and drove its arm into the wound. It proceeded to tear out large hunks of Angelic flesh and consume them while the bridge crew divided themselves into those who watched in horrified fascination and those who looked away trying not to be sick.

Finally, the Evangelion ate the Angel's core, and then bellowed out a roar of triumph that echoed throughout the entire GeoFront. After the war machine powered down, the bridge crew attempted to contact Shinji to ask what he had been thinking to do something like that. There was no answer. They tried again. There was no answer. Finally, Misato ordered a video link into the entry plug.

Shinji wasn't in the entry plug. There was nobody in the entry plug. All that was inside the plug was an empty white and blue plug suit, floating in the LCL-filled tube.

* * *

A/N: Some reviewers have expressed a hope that the story ends up Shinji/Chloe. I might go that way, I might not. But unless Chloe gets over the only canon pairing in Noir (one-sided Chloe/Kirika – the ever popular Kirika/Mireille is just plausible fanon), there is no way to make a Noir story that is Chloe/Anybody other than Kirika.

Anybody else notice that the only battle in which the fixed defenses of Tokyo-3 made a noticeable contribution to the fight in was against the 5th, and then only as distractions and red-shirt material? When you consider the fact that Gendo knew that those guns and missile launchers would not be able to harm the forces that were going to attack the city, it's odd that they wasted the money on them.

Teeth-to-tail: The ratio of people in a military organization who are involved in front-line combat to those who support the combatants. For a modern example, the US Air Force has over 300,000 people in it, and less than 6,000 planes. Even allowing for multi-pilot planes and planes that have people on board with other functions than piloting, the people who serve in the air are outnumbered by those that serve on the ground by a considerable amount, leaving the teeth-to-tail ratio very low. With NERV, that ratio is ridiculously low, since they have never had more than four pilots on duty at the same time at any point in the series (In the brief period between Toji's recruitment and his medical discharge).


	19. What I Think About You

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 19

What I Think About You

In terms of scope, the damage done to the GeoFront wasn't that bad. Damage to the outer armor only covered less than one percent of the total area. Two buildings were damaged, and the vegetation in a small area was torn up. Within that scope, the damage was horrendous. The damage to the armor may have been over a small area, but it penetrated all the way from the surface to the GeoFront. The two buildings that had been damaged could not possibly be repaired without disassembling what was left down to the foundation and rebuilding them from scratch. As for the vegetation, three acres of unexpected deforestation had left the area riddled with enormous splinters of wood and jagged stumps, and the melons that had been growing in the small garden plot that some unidentified person had set up had all been trampled to pulp.

Even that was nothing compared to what had happened to the civilians who were caught in the battle. Up until this point, the only non-combatants that had been harmed during any of the Angel attacks had all been people who for some reason had chosen to disregard the emergency warnings and remained outside the shelters. That had just changed. Between those killed by the destruction of the shelter, those trampled to death by the panicked mobs trying to get out of the collapsing shelter, and those who the Angel had crushed and tossed aside as if it was juicing a fruit and discarding the rinds afterwords, there were at least two thousand casualties. The exact number was not known. NERV personnel wouldn't be able to even attempt to make a serious count until the rubble of the shelter had been cleared away and bodies removed. The people the Angel had killed personally were so severely crushed that even figuring out how many people a given mangled lump of flesh had been would be difficult, let alone who they had been when alive. There were going to be a great many empty graves erected in the Tokyo-3 graveyard in the near future.

The survivors of the massacre were still scattered across the area. Some had managed to find another shelter and hid there. Others had hidden in the undamaged parts of the forest. The rest were still running with no particular destination in mind. It would take hours to round them all up and get them shipped back to the surface. Hopefully none of them would end up wandering close to anything classified before they could be found.

The PR impact of the battle was mixed. On one hand, the survivors of the shelter's destruction could and almost certainly would tell everyone they knew about how evil and monstrous the Angel was. On the other hand, the means by which the Angel was defeated wasn't something that was likely to inspire confidence in witnesses. Evangelions confronting the Angel and defeating it with a mixture of spears, knives and guns was something that brought to mind images of heroic struggles. Evangelions vivisecting an Angel with its bare hands and eating the pieces was something that was likely to make people think that their champions were just as monstrous as the things they fought.

That was just the start of the issues running through Misato's mind as she considered the net result of the battle. If another Angel decided to attack the next day, NERV would be in trouble. It had taken over a month and a small fortune to repair the hole that the 5th Angel had drilled into the GeoFront's armor, and that had been fairly small. The 14th had blasted a hole roughly half a square kilometer in size straight through every layer of armor. It would take a very large fortune and a great deal of time to replace that much armor, and until it was, every Angel to pass through would have a straight path into the GeoFront unless NERV could have the Evangelions intercept them well outside the city limits. Assuming they could get Evangelions ready to fight the next Angel in time.

EVA-02 was still in excellent condition. Some armor plates had been cracked and would need eventual replacement, but all that it needed in order to be combat ready was a replacement power cord and a few hours to charge the backup batteries, and they had extra power cords in stock. EVA-00 would need to have half of a leg regrown, a task that would take weeks. Once that was done, the leg would have to be rearmored. Fortunately, spare armor plates for the Evangelions were available, as the only parts of the Angel-contaminated EVA-03 that the MAGI had determined to be safe to be salvaged for use by the other units. Even with that, EVA-00 would be useless for its current pilot unless they managed to replace their severely diminished stock of ammunition for their EVA-sized firearms. Unit 00's primary weapon had been cut into two pieces, and as positron rifles weren't something that were stockpiled in bulk, it would have to either be carefully reassembled or (more likely) scrapped and a new one commissioned.

But the real problem was with EVA-01. Apart from losing all the armor on one arm, it was completely undamaged. But its sudden berserk behavior meant that nobody was sure if the unit was still controllable. Everyone was still trying to figure out what the overall implications of it eating the S2 organ of the Angel would be. And on top of that, they were still trying to figure out exactly what had happened to its pilot.

* * *

The remaining pilots and the NERV senior staff gathered together. Once everyone was seated, Ritsuko began the briefing.

"At roughly 1631 hours this afternoon, Evangelion Unit 01 engaged the 14th Angel at close range. While doing so, the pilot's synchronization ratio started to rise at a rate totally unprecedented by any of our current pilots. At 1633 hours, the Third Child's sync ratio reached 400%, a level only reached by an Evangelion pilot once before in the history of the project." Ritsuko's voice was calm, professional. The face of Commander Ikari as he listened was just as calm. The two pilots and Misato were much more tense.

"The degree of synchronization between a pilot and his or his Evangelion impacts the amount of fine control the pilot has and the reaction time between giving a command and the command being acted upon. At the theoretical maximum of 100%, an Evangelion would literally become an extension of the pilot's body, and could be used just as easily. However, the theoretical maximum is not the actual maximum, and the consequences of going above the theoretical maximum are… unpleasant. When the first person to ever attempt to pilot EVA reached 400% synchronization during the activation test on Unit 01 ten years ago, her mind couldn't take the stress of being connected to the unit that strongly and her ego barrier collapsed. With the ego barrier destroyed, her body dissolved into a substance almost impossible to distinguish from the LCL within the entry plug. As best as we can tell, the same thing has happened to the Third Child."

"How do you plan to proceed from here, Doctor?" The Commander asked.

"We still have the records of the attempts made to recover the previous pilot from Unit 01 ten years ago. That attempt failed, but the equipment used back then wasn't as advanced as what we have available today. If nothing else, the computers controlling the equipment in question were two generations behind the MAGI. I feel we have a good chance of safely extracting the pilot from the unit. I have my staff going over the records and beginning the preparations as we speak. We should be ready to attempt the extraction in approximately one month's time."

"Very good, Doctor. Keep me informed." With that, Gendo left.

Kirika looked at Ritsuko. "Is there a reason why this wasn't mentioned when I was first approached by NERV?" She asked. "It's customary to inform people of the risks of a job when you try to hire them."

Ritsuko winced. That was actually a fairly reasonable complaint. Serving in any military unit brought with it the risk of combat, and with combat came the risk of injury or death. That was something any soldier knew and accepted when they enlisted. But working with equipment that could turn you into orange goop for reasons that were still not entirely understood was not part of the obviously implicit risks of a piloting career. The girl was right – she should have been given a warning about that when she was first recruited. Gendo and SEELE had decided not to disclose that data to possible recruits for fear of scaring them all off. Not that she was going to admit that.

"After the first incident, activation tests were put on hold until safety precautions could be developed. After the second test, using Unit 02, also resulted in less extreme oversynchronization issues for the pilot, we took several years to develop the system we have at present. We honestly thought that we had resolved that issue before we allowed any of the current generation of pilots to attempt to activate the units, and up until now the evidence had suggested that we were justified in thinking so."

"Who were the original pilots?" Asuka inquired.

Ritsuko cringed again. The German girl just had to notice that she had admitted to a previous generation of pilots – and realize that she had never knowingly met anyone from that generation.

"The original pilots were scientists who were key developers of the Evangelion units," Ritsuko admitted. "The first pilot was Doctor Yui Ikari. The second was Doctor Kyoko Soryu."

* * *

Asuka had to wonder about the strange coincidence that she had just learned about. That the first people to attempt to pilot Evangelion were people involved in building them wasn't that surprising. The fact that those early pilots had been the mothers of three out of the four current pilots was. And Asuka would not have been surprised to learn that Ayanami's mother was also on the project somehow, and would have been the test pilot for Unit 00 had the first two attempts been less disastrous.

That was also something she'd wished she knew earlier. Asuka still had nightmares about her mother's madness and suicide, ten years after the event. Had she known back then that EVA was the cause of her mother's insanity, she probably wouldn't have wanted anything to do with NERV. But she was here now, and one thing she did not like to do was back away. She had succeeded where her mother had failed and piloted EVA-02. In fact, judging by when the First and Third Children had first successfully piloted, she was probably the first person to ever successfully activate an Evangelion without having their bodies or minds dissolve. That was something that she might have taken pride in had she known about it at the time. At the moment, it just made her feel like they had been using her as a guinea pig for the new system to see if they had made it possible for someone to pilot EVA and remain alive and sane.

Thinking back on that day, Asuka remembered briefly wondering if there was someone else in the entry plug for a few moments when EVA-02 first activated. She had eventually shrugged off the thought as a childish fancy. After a while, the sensation that had made her wonder about that had faded away. But Kirika had mentioned feeling something like that whenever she piloted her EVA or Shinji's for that matter. And that the feeling was more welcoming when she was in the same Evangelion that her mother had died in.

What happened to a mind that was dissolved inside an entry plug? Could it be purged when they flushed out the old LCL? Or would traces of it remain, even then?

* * *

Chloe's apartment complex was considerably emptier than it had been the week before. Most everyone living there had been in emergency shelter 19, and as such had gotten caught up in the Angel attack when the shelter was destroyed. There was no way to tell how many of those missing were killed by the Angel, and how many were killed by the crazed mob, whose survivors probably had yet to grasp that they had probably killed someone they knew. Chloe didn't have that luxury. She knew that the only reason the shelter had been attacked was because she was in it. All of those deaths had been on her head.

Chloe was hardly a stranger to death. She had witnessed her first assassination when she was four, and had performed her first at six. By the time she was eight, she had lost all interest in keeping track of exactly how many people she had killed. From something Altena had told her before her death, her kill total was over one hundred, but beyond that she didn't have the slightest notion of how many deaths she had caused, and in truth she didn't particularly care, either. Why did this incident feel different? Maybe it was because of the circumstances. All of the previous deaths on her hands were caused deliberately. This was the first time that she had ever gotten somebody killed by accident.

The scary thing was she didn't know why she was targeted, or what to do about it. In her line of work, being targeted by enemies was as semi-common occurrence. But the motivations of those enemies were usually easy to understand. Virtually all incidents before this one were either an attempt to prevent her from reaching her target, or an attempt to avenge the death of a previous target. In those cases, all she ever had to do was kill her attackers, track down the home address of their leader, and kill him too. It was a fairly straightforward solution to a simple problem.

This time it wasn't like that. She could safely assume that her being targeted was connected to her AT Field somehow, but she didn't know how. She didn't have the slightest idea how to kill an Angel, even if she had a weapon that could do what nuclear bombardments couldn't. And if anyone in the world knew where the Angels were coming from, they weren't telling.

As Chloe made her way to school for the first time since the battle, she hoped that the interrogator she had called in to debrief the NERV doctor she had picked up had moved her to a new location. The building she had stashed the woman in had been in the area that the Angel had blasted through on its way down. Given that the Doctor had been afraid to leave the safehouse for highly justifiable reasons, she could have ended up killed in that incident.

Kensuke was raving about how cool the battle had been. Apparently he had snuck out of his shelter and watched it from a distance. He had either not noticed or not understood the parts with massive civilian casualties. Chloe had pity on any military foolish enough to accept the boy as a recruit. Someone with that little understanding of what combat was really like would be more dangerous to his allies than his enemies.

The class representative started going through attendance. Two students were 'missing' from the attack, meaning they were almost certainly dead, but the authorities hadn't been able to find enough of the bodies to prove it. Five more had transferred to another school in a less dangerous city. Apparently the Horaki girl knew that before even coming through the door. There was still one person that was absent after accounting for that.

"Where's Shinji, Asuka?" Hikari asked.

Chloe's cousin looked unhappy. "Shinji… won't be coming in today. He was injured in the battle."

Hikari marked Shinji's name off as an excused absence. "Can I count on you to bring him his assignments?"

"That won't be possible. He's… in a coma. The doctors think that if he doesn't wake up in the next month or so, he might not wake up, ever."

All activity in the class came to a crashing halt at that announcement. Another one of the school's heroes had fallen. Ayanami's injuries from the previous battle had passed unremarked simply because she had been hospitalized in training accidents twice before, and so she was often out due to injuries. None of the other pilots had had that problem before. Chloe looked towards Kirika, and saw her former partner's face twisted in grief.

It was bad enough that she'd gotten people killed by accident. Now she'd gone and hurt people that were important to her as well.

* * *

As Rei continued experimenting with her AT Field, she considered all the work that was going on elsewhere in Central Dogma to recover the incapacitated Third Child. She couldn't see why the effort was justified. She certainly wouldn't bother expending any effort to save a pilot that had tried to kill another, even if that other hadn't been her.

It wasn't even if the Third was irreplaceable. Only one of the pilots could be considered that in respect to the fight against the Angels, and that was only because Dr Akagi had not gotten around to seeing if anyone else could pilot Unit 02, leaving Pilot Soryu as the only pilot with a proven ability to use it. All the other pilots and Evangelions were interchangeable.

If Pilot Ikari could not be recovered from Unit 01, the unit would not remain idle. NERV command could simply rearrange the pilot roster so that the alternate pilot for Unit 01 take over that role. Of course, the backup pilot for Unit 01 was also the primary pilot for Unit 00, but that wasn't a serious difficulty, as Unit 00 also had a backup pilot. And the backup pilot for Unit 00 was… Rei Ayanami.

As Rei pondered this, she realized that if the recovery process failed, she would be rid of one of those that had betrayed her and regain her original purpose in one stroke. Perhaps there was a way she could ensure this happened…

With that, Rei started to think of ways she could subtly sabotage the retrieval effort.

* * *

Two weeks had passed. Every morning, Hikari would ask if there had been any change in Shinji's condition, and every time, either Kirika or Asuka would indicate there was none.

The group that had formed around Shinji during lunchtime had broken up. Chloe thought of Kensuke as a fool. While Kirika's opinion wasn't as negative, she didn't really have anything in common with him other than Shinji. And while Chloe wanted to spend time with Kirika, the other girl was making it quite clear that she didn't want to spend time with her.

After school had let out, Chloe tried to speak with Kirika.

"Kirika?"

Kirika ignored her and kept walking.

"Kirika, I now what you must be feeling. Shinji was my friend. Why won't you at least talk to me?"

Kirika turned around.

"Friend?" She said. "Please. I know how little that word means to you."

"What are you…"

"Do the words 'I will not let anyone stand in our path. Not even the one you used to call friend' mean anything to you? You were my oldest friend, and you chose to throw that away when you attacked me and Mireille.

"I thought I could trust you, and in the end the only thing you needed me for was the fact that you couldn't complete the Trials alone. Was I ever anything to you other than a means to an end?

"Not that it matters. You will never gain what you turned your back on me for. The Trials are over. You lost."

Even though nobody else in the schoolyard could understand Russian, the sheer venom in Kirika's voice was unmistakable. Chloe's eyes filled with tears as she fled the area.

* * *

Chloe fled back to her home, not even trying to hold back the tears pouring from her eyes. All of her dreams had just been ruthlessly crushed before her eyes. And the person who had done it – quite deliberately – was the girl she had loved and idolized her entire life.

Kirika didn't love her. She didn't even like her. Whenever the girl of her dreams looked at her, all she saw was a monster who only saw Kirika as the means to an end, and was perfectly willing to betray her once the goal was within reach. All because of words she had never said and things she had never done.

The only thing that Chloe could think of that would be more abhorrent than trying to kill Kirika would be trying to kill Altena. Yet Kirika had flatly accused her of doing that. And trying to kill Mireille as well. While Chloe would be perfectly willing to kill the Corsican if she thought she could get away with it, she knew full well that she hadn't attempted to do such a thing. The last time the two had met before Tokyo-3, Chloe had actually saved the woman's life during a battle against the Hong Yiban Triad. All she would have had to have done to get Mireille killed was do nothing for two seconds, and she knew that the woman knew it. Chloe had spent most of the time between that incident and coming to Tokyo-3 unconscious in a hospital, so how could she had done that? But somehow, she had the feeling that Kirika would not listen to any possible explanation from her. On top of that, there were the last six words that Kirika had said.

_The Trials are over. You lost._

Had she been written off as unworthy of becoming Noir while unconscious in the hospital all those months? If that was the case, then who was she? If she wasn't a Sapling, and wasn't Noir, what was she to do with her life? All she had wanted from life was Kirika and Noir, and both of those were now denied her.

As she reached her home, she came to a conclusion. Tomorrow, and practically every day after, she would have to wake up and know that she was a complete failure. She would have to look at the one she loved and know that all she would ever get in return was hatred. She would know that she was the only person to have failed the Trials and live to know that they had done so. She had lost everything that mattered to her in life.

Chloe rolled up one sleeve, then drew her dagger and brought it to her wrist.

* * *

Asuka didn't have the slightest idea what it was that Kirika had said to her cousin, but judging from the tone, she suspected it wasn't very nice. When Chloe fled the area in tears, she was sure of it. Looking at the Fourth Child and her guardian, Asuka saw a look of savage satisfaction at Chloe's pain. Quickly deciding that the only relative she had in the country was far more important than two people who took pleasure in making her kin suffer as part of some private feud that she still wasn't sure she'd heard the full explanation for, she took off after Chloe.

Chloe's path took her straight back to her home. When Asuka caught up to her, she was horrified to see her cousin about to slice open her wrist. Whatever Kirika had said to her, it had driven Chloe to suicide.

Asuka had lost her mother in spirit when her mind had been crushed by the oversynchronization incident. She had lost her in truth a few months later when what was left of her hung herself. Her father had started slipping away from her the moment he started ignoring her insane mother in favor of the woman who became her stepmother. Now she had arrived just in time to see her cousin try to kill herself.

"What do you think you're doing?" She screamed, grabbing the hand holding the knife.

If Chloe had been trying to use knife on anyone other than herself, Asuka's action would have been fatal. Ten years of 'light workouts' had left her slender frame much stronger than it looked. Chloe's suicidal mindset was the only thing that allowed Asuka to slowly twist the knife out of her hand and toss it to the other side of the room instead of getting reflexively killed by the girl she was trying to disarm.

"Why couldn't you just let me die?" Chloe sobbed.

"Why do want to die?"

"What reason do I have to go on living? Everything I wanted in life is gone." With that, Chloe reached under her vest and pulled out a second knife. Asuka forced that one out of her hand. Chloe produced a third knife from the same place. Asuka disposed of that one and then searched her cousin. After removing a harness that contained enough throwing knives to kill their entire class without reusing any of them, Asuka had to wonder _why_ Chloe was wearing something like that under her vest as part of her normal school outfit.

Asuka pulled out her phone and called Mireille. "I'm spending the night with my cousin. Tell the Fourth Child that I'm going to have words with her when I get back." She hung up before any reply could be made. Asuka then turned to her weeping cousin. "What did Kirika say to make you think your life is over?"

Chloe took a deep breath, and then started talking about Kirika. How Chloe had idolized her since the age of four, and how she had pushed herself to her limits to become worthy of becoming her partner. As she continued on that topic for over half an hour, Asuka came to the conclusion that her cousin's fixation on the Fourth Child was every bit as severe as the Third Child's was. And that even if Chloe had expected that the two would end up going into the same line of work one day, she was _not_ referring to the professional sense of the word when she used the term 'partner'.

"One day, almost two years ago, Kirika left the valley." Chloe continued. "I wouldn't see her again for several months. The next time I saw her, I was a complete stranger to her, and that Corsican was living the life by her side that I had been dreaming about for years.

"I tried to get back into her life. Every time we ran into each other, I tried to see if I could get her to remember a little about me. By the time we met that time in China, I thought I was making progress. But right after that, I got sick and spent the next several months unconscious in the hospital. By the time I recovered, she was living here.

"But ever since I came here, she's been cold to me. She was friendlier to me when she didn't remember me at all than she's been here. And I honestly don't know why.

"Today she told me. She accused me of saying things I never said, doing things I never did. For some reason she thinks that I'm a backstabbing bitch who wants to manipulate her for my own gain.

"The girl I love hates me for something I didn't do, and is walking off in the arms of another woman. How can my life be any more ruined?"

Before she had walked into the apartment, Asuka hadn't expected to learn that her cousin was a lesbian with a rather extreme crush on her coworker. She certainly wasn't expecting her cousin to accuse said coworker of being in an affair with her own guardian. Especially with the semi-regular public flirtations between Mireille and Kaji that had been going on for months.

Asuka didn't think that Kirika thought of Mireille that way. She highly doubted that she thought of _anyone_ that way, boy or girl. Romance simply wasn't part of her nature. She didn't even have very many interests of note outside of combat. The only activities she spent time on outside of work and school were painting and watering her plants. Beyond that, she only tended to get involved in an activity if the other pilots made an effort to include her.

Asuka spent the rest of the evening comforting her cousin. The following morning, Chloe had recovered to the point where she felt that the girl could be left to herself while she cornered Kirika and got some answers as to what she was doing.

But Asuka did make a point of taking all the knives with her when she left, just in case.

* * *

Kirika noted that Chloe had called in sick for school that day. That was a pleasant change – for the first time since she had arrived, she wouldn't have to worry about a possible attack from the Soldat Noir. She did notice that she was receiving a large number of hostile looks from Asuka, however. That hostility became even more apparent at lunchtime, when Asuka grabbed her arm and dragged her to the roof.

"Alright, Fourth Child." Asuka snarled. "I have had enough of your evasions. You are going to explain _exactly_ what your problem with my cousin is, and you are going to do it _right now_. What you said about her feud with Mireille doesn't hold water. Chloe was unconscious in a hospital for months before she came to Tokyo-3, and she said she didn't do anything to her when she last saw you two in China before she fell ill."

Kirika snorted. "I thought she could lie better than that."

" _WHAT?_ "

"I can name six occasions when Mireille or I, and usually both of us, ran into Chloe after our trip to China. None of those meetings were in a hospital." Kirika started counting off on her fingers. "She was on Corsica when Mireille went to visit her family's grave. We both saw her in Austria on the day her parents died. I met her a few weeks later in Paris, and she was in Paris again the night our home was attacked. The day before I was approached by NERV, she was in a small valley in the Pyrenees. She wasn't showing any signs of ill health until the end of that meeting. Unless you expect me to believe that there are two of her out there, Chloe's story doesn't hold water."

Asuka paused a moment at the response, then retaliated. "Don't try to change the subject, Fourth Child! Thanks to what you did to Chloe yesterday, I spent all of last night convincing her to not kill herself. If you didn't like her that way, you could have let her down gently instead of ripping her heart out and stomping on it!"

So Chloe had tried to commit suicide? Kirika didn't really see anything wrong with that. If her enemies wanted to eliminate themselves for her, they were welcome to do so. The only reason she hadn't tried to kill the girl when she first appeared was because her connection to Asuka would have caused unwanted complications. Then the second part of that statement hit her.

"What was that?"

"When I made it to her apartment yesterday, she was about to slit her wrists. I had to take about twenty knives off of her before she stopped trying. I hope you're proud of yourself."

"No, not that. The thing about ripping her heart out."

"Oh, yes. The _reason_ she wanted to kill herself yesterday was because the person she had been crushing on since the age of four hates her for something she doesn't remember doing. What were you…"

Kirika tuned out Asuka's ongoing diatribe. The first part was revelation enough. Suddenly, the words that Chloe had screamed during the fight at the Manor made a great deal more sense.

_All of these months I've had to watch you living with her_ _. It should have been me. **IT SHOULD HAVE BEEN ME! HOW COULD YOU POSSIBLY CHOOSE HER OVER ME?**_

Altena and Odette's philosophies only agreed on one point, but that point was apparently very true: Love could destroy people. It had certainly done so to Chloe.

Chloe's actions hadn't been about Noir, at least not entirely. It had also been about a romantic fixation that had led her to obsession, which had been compounded by jealousy over a presumed (but actually non-existent) relationship between her and Mireille. The revelation about Mireille's parents might not have (entirely) been a scheme to get Mireille killed by maneuvering her into attacking a superior opponent, but an application of their lessons about using any method available, no matter how underhanded, to achieve a goal to force a breakup between Kirika and Chloe's perceived rival. When it hadn't worked, Chloe had tried to kill her rival in a fit of madness and desperation. How much of the later conflicts could have been avoided had she realized this sooner?

"How could you choose her…" She whispered, "over me?"

Asuka heard Kirika whisper and stopped her ranting. "What was that?"

"A lot of the things Chloe did suddenly make more sense now."

"Such as…?"

"Why she kissed me when we were bathing together that time in the Pyrenees."

Asuka choked on that statement. "Let me get this straight. My cousin kissed you – while you were both _completely naked_ – and you didn't know that she was sweet on you?"

Kirika was suddenly very glad they were talking in German. It was embarrassing enough talking about this without any listeners being able to understand what they were saying. She nodded.

Asuka facepalmed and shook her head saying "You're hopeless.

"Okay, now after my cousin made what was possibly the most obvious pass in history at you and it went completely over your head, what happened to make you so angry at her?"

Kirika flushed in embarrassment at the rather accurate description of what had happened at that pool.

"I didn't react to her advances at all. Later that day, when Mireille arrived, she and Chloe ended up in a fight. It quickly escalated to the point where they were using drawn weapons. That's where Mireille got the knife scar on her left thigh.

"I tried to break the fight up. Since Chloe was winning, that meant I had to disarm her. But when I did that, she snapped. She started attacking both of us, demanding to know why I had chosen Mireille over her. I guess that between my not responding to the kiss and intervening on Mireille's behalf, she thought I had rejected her.

"I didn't want to do it, but she didn't give me any choice. There wasn't any way I could have gotten her to stop attacking without taking her down. I honestly thought that her wounds had been mortal until she showed up here."

Kirika turned away from the younger girl. "If you'll excuse me, I need to think about this for a while." Asuka did not object as Kirika walked away.

* * *

Chloe was surprised to learn that her cousin had actually managed to get answers out of her ex-partner. However, all the answers gave her were more questions.

How could she do something as important as kissing Kirika and not remember it? She had been hoping to be in a situation where she could do that for _years_ , and when it finally happened she didn't remember it. Life just wasn't fair sometimes. For that matter, why didn't she remember any of the meetings with Kirika that she had mentioned? Six incidents, spread out across a period of several months, and she couldn't recall a single one of them, or anything that happened between them, for that matter.

And the doctors had told her that she had been ill, never stating the exact disease. Kirika claimed she had been in a fight and received potentially lethal injuries. Those two statements didn't match. And if Kirika had been wrong about her injuries being deadly, then that was the first time she had been wrong about such things, ever.

As she considered what she had learned, she made a connection to something she had seen earlier. Rei Ayanami had also received injuries that by rights should have killed her and turned up alive, without memories of some events that had happened the week before. Yet another thing the two had in common for reasons unknown.

Chloe was really starting to look forward to when she could get a hold of Ayanami's medical records. They might have something that could explain what was happening to her.

* * *

Two weeks passed. Chloe returned to classes, but did not attempt to approach Kirika again. The two had yet to figure out what to do about what they had learned about each other, and so avoided each other until they could figure it out. Asuka was happy to see her cousin pull out of her suicidal depression, but decided to hold off on returning the knives until she had seen the two interact without Kirika trying to bite Chloe's head off. Chloe didn't bother telling Asuka that she had another set of knives that hadn't been confiscated.

NERV was finally ready to attempt to retrieve Shinji. Large amounts of esoteric equipment had been assembled around EVA-01 and carefully aligned to the micrometer. Everyone knew that the slightest mistake in the preparations could make the retrieval effort a failure.

"Alright, let's do this." Ritsuko said.

The equipment slowly powered up. Most of the watchers held their breath in anticipation. The observers watched silently as the devices tried to reconstitute Shinji's body from the LCL. Within five minutes, it became apparent that something was going wrong.

"Feedback curves are 3% below nominal." Maya reported.

"What? What's causing it?" Ritsuko demanded.

"Checking. The portside resonance booster is misaligned by 7 minutes. This is causing part of each verteron pulse to be lost on each reflection. The feedback curve is now 5% below nominal and still dropping!"

"Boost power to compensate!"

"I'm trying! The misaligned pulses are interfering with each other in unpredictable ways. The MAGI are trying to find a counter, but I'm not sure we can fix this without readjusting the equipment."

For the next hour the technical team tried to correct for the error, but the damage had been done. Seventy minutes after the retrieval effort began, it was written off as a failure, all thanks to a setup mistake so small that it couldn't be detected by the naked eye.

In her quarters elsewhere in the GeoFront, Rei listened to the unsuccessful attempt to save the Third Child, and quietly smiled when her efforts to sabotage the effort ultimately proved to have been successful.

* * *

The technicians and various observers slowly filed away from the hanger. Kirika remained. She knew that the alignment error could not possibly have been a mistake. The technicians had been measuring the relative position of every single piece of equipment in the retrieval effort with laser surveying equipment every other day since they had started. The last check had been the night before. The devices were more than precise enough to detect the misalignment. That meant that somebody had moved the equipment in the ten hour period between the final check and the start of the retrieval effort. The final check had been right before the hanger had been locked down for the night. Kirika had been the first person to show up the next morning, and she hadn't seen anyone touch the device in question.

All of that pointed to one conclusion: Someone had entered the hanger in the night and deliberately tampered with the equipment. That person had just murdered her brother. She hoped she learned who did it someday. And when that day came, the perpetrator would learn exactly why the name of Noir had been feared in the criminal underworld for centuries.

But that wouldn't bring back Shinji. She would never see him again. There wouldn't even be a real grave for him, not unless they emptied the entry plug into an enormous sponge and buried the sponge. Another person she had been able to trust and care for had been stolen from her. She was one step closer to being alone.

As she stared at the enormous machine that had apparently absorbed her mother and had just absorbed her brother, she came up with one last desperate chance to save Shinji. Every time she had activated an Evangelion, she had always felt like there was someone else there for a brief moment. The presence in Unit 01 always felt like it knew her and welcomed her. Kirika didn't know what it was, but maybe it could be convinced to let Shinji go.

Kirika walked across the empty hangar bay towards EVA-01. The entry plug was still accessible, having been opened but not drained. She jumped in and started entering commands. The plug sealed itself and returned to its place inside the unit. As Kirika started entering the activation sequence, she started talking.

"I don't know who you are, but I need your help." She said, her voice choked with sorrow. "Give Shinji back to me, _please!_ I don't want to be alone again."

Kirika felt the familiar presence again, clearer than she had ever felt it before. It felt like someone was trying to hold her, comfort her. For a moment, she could have sworn that she saw a brown haired woman reaching out to her, and felt a pair of arms wrap around her. The next moment, there were two sets of empty clothes in the entry plug.

* * *

A/N: There are risks in war, and anyone who can't accept that should find a different career. But that is not the same as the risks involved with using equipment that has a proven _lethal_ safety defect with no guarantee that the defect has been fixed. At the very least the pilots should have been given a warning that going over 100% synchronization can be dangerous, even if it was highly unlikely that they would ever actually do so. After all, a war machine that kills the user before they make it onto the battlefield is worse than useless.

Before anyone asks whether or not Asuka would be automatically accepting of Chloe's preferences, consider this: If Asuka had rejected Chloe because of that, Chloe would have returned to the task of killing herself before Asuka made it out of the building. And Asuka has endured far too many family tragedies to deliberately court another one.

Credit for the idea of Kirika getting sucked into EVA-01 to join Shinji goes to gunman.


	20. The World Through Your Eyes

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 20

The World Through Your Eyes

Ritsuko Akagi was a woman who had spent her entire life in her mother's shadow. Even if most of the world was unaware of the achievements of the late Naoko Akagi due to their highly classified nature, everyone connected to the technical end of the research organization GEHIRN and its successor NERV knew of her. It had been Naoko who designed and constructed the first MAGI supercomputer network. It had been Naoko who had taken over the development of the Evangelions after Yui Ikari and Kyoko Soryu had died, taking the project to a completed state. Ritsuko knew that she would just be another one of the subordinates serving under the direction of her mother had Naoko not committed suicide six years previously. Even in her current position as the chief scientist of NERV, she found herself mainly maintaining her mother's creations and refining her mother's discoveries rather than stepping into new ground in her own right.

Ritsuko wanted to do something that would prove that she was a brilliant scientist in her own right, rather than just being her mother's understudy. The dummy plug system was her first attempt to achieve that. That attempt was terminated alongside the second Rei. The knowledge that the Evangelions could reject the person the dummy plug data was based on so spectacularly had killed the project. If the Evas spat out the dummy plugs and refused to move until their normal pilots showed up, then the plugs were nothing more than a waste of time, money, and storage space. Some of the other branches of NERV had taken the preliminary data from the project in the hopes that they could train the Mass Production models to operate using the dummy plugs from the start, but beyond that, the research was a dead end.

The pilot retrieval effort was her second attempt. Her mother had actually been involved in the unsuccessful attempt to retrieve Yui Ikari ten years before. The chance to succeed where her mother had failed was something that Ritsuko could not resist. She had carefully planned out her approach over the course of the month that had been setting up the equipment. Every single measurement had been double-checked at every stage of the preparation, using devices that could detect errors as small as .000001%. Yet despite all this, the attempt had failed, because one device had been misaligned by .03%.

Somehow, the device had managed to be off by a factor of three thousand times the margin for error in the measuring devices. That could mean one of two things: Either somebody had been criminally careless during the last check, or somebody had sabotaged the effort after the last check. She would have to speak with Captain Hatanake. If the misalignment was due to sabotage, the responsibility for dealing with it would be his. If it was due to incompetence, the responsibility would be hers. She hoped for the perpetrator's sake that it was criminally motivated. Section 2's retaliation wouldn't be anywhere near as nasty as what she was planning.

Ristuko's thoughts were interrupted by a call from Maya.

"Sempai! Someone is trying to activate Unit 01!"

"What! Get me a visual into the entry plug!"

The video channel opened, showing the Fourth Child attempting to power up the machine that had killed her mother and brother. A voice came in over the speaker.

"I don't know who you are, but I need your help." Kirika's voice pleaded, "Give Shinji back to me, _please!_ I don't want to be alone again."

"Evangelion is activating." Maya reported. "Synchronization is spiking! It's… cleared 400%!"

That was nearly ten times the Fourth Child's record high. It was also the point at which oversynchronization dangers shifted from being psychologically damaging to being potentially lethal. The bridge crew attempted to force a shutdown, but it was too late. The girl had dissolved into the LCL.

Somehow, Ritsuko knew that the Commander would not take the news that he was the only member of the Ikari family who had not been taken into EVA-01 well.

* * *

The entity didn't know where he was. Everything around him was an indistinct blur. He didn't know how long he had been in this place. Time had long since stopped meaning anything to him. Without any point of reference to mark the passage of time, he was stuck in an endless now. All sensations were distorted. He felt nothing, tasted nothing, smelled nothing, and heard nothing. Then the last point changed. The entity heard a voice ask him a question.

"Who are you?"

He didn't know who had asked the question. It could have been his own voice asking the question and he wouldn't have noticed. It was, however, the first actual event to occur in the entire time he had been in wherever he was. And it was a question he knew the answer to.

"I am Shinji Ikari."

The voice asked a second question.

"What is your purpose?"

That was another easy question for him.

"I want to help my sister."

Shinji somehow got the impression that the person he was talking to was smiling at him. Then his world finally started coming into focus, and he found himself someplace he had never been before.

* * *

The entity didn't know where she was. Everything around her was an indistinct blur. She didn't know how long she had been in this place. Time had long since stopped meaning anything to her. Without any point of reference to mark the passage of time, she was stuck in an endless now. All sensations were distorted. She felt nothing, tasted nothing, smelled nothing, and heard nothing. Then the last point changed. The entity heard a voice ask her a question.

"Who are you?"

For some reason, the entity didn't think that replying to whoever was addressing her with a half-truth or an evasion was an option. But when the entity thought about giving the truth, she couldn't answer the question. Kirika Yumura was a lie, a construct of forged documents created so that she would have something to answer to. Kirika Ikari was a complete stranger to her. She might have been that person at one time, but she had long forgotten who she was. Noir was a name that she could rightfully claim, but that name brought with it responsibilities that she had rejected.

"I don't know."

"What is your purpose?"

Another difficult question. Looking back over her life, Kirika couldn't think of many major decisions that hadn't either been made for her or been made by her as a direct result of her being manipulated to choose the choice that her manipulator wanted. Practically everything she had done in her life before meeting Mireille were things that Altena had instructed her to do. The goals she had held at that point in her life existed purely because Altena had conditioned her to seek them. Becoming an assassin after meeting Mireille was something she had done because she had wanted to help out Mireille in her career. Mireille had chosen her career because she had been manipulated by her uncle so that it would be the only profession she would think of going into. He had done so on orders from Altena. Her becoming a pilot was entirely due to the fact that she didn't really have a choice in the matter if she wanted to avoid having most of France becoming her enemy. All of the decisions that were truly her own tended to be things to resolve the issues of the moment, even if some of them continued to matter afterwards. She had never once even thought of looking at her life and deciding where she wanted to be ten years in the future.

"I don't know."

Kirika somehow got the impression that the person she was speaking to was not happy about her answers. But it didn't feel like the questioner was upset at her, for them, but someone else. The sensation directed towards her felt more like pity.

Kirika briefly felt herself held in a comforting embrace by someone she could not see. Moments later her vision cleared, and she found herself in an unfamiliar place.

* * *

Gendo was not pleased by the present turn of events. The loss of one pilot he could deal with. The loss of two was a threat to his scenario. Had this happened two more Angels down the line, it would have been inconsequential, but at this stage, it was dangerous.

With both the Third and Fourth Children absorbed by EVA-01, he no longer had any pilots that could synchronize with that unit. To further complicate things, the only pilot he had left that could use EVA-00 was Rei, who was supposed to be undergoing a long convalescence after all the injuries she had received during the battle with the 13th Angel. Should she suddenly be fit to pilot, people would realize that she was not entirely what she seemed. That effectively reduced NERV's forces to the Second Child and EVA-02. The committee would not be pleased to hear that.

There was one thing from the incident which drew Gendo's interest. Since the arrival of the Fourth Child, he had looked for some means which he could use to control the girl. The girl's guardian was useless in that respect. The primary loyalty of those two were towards each other. The other pilots weren't much better. They only became part of the Fourth's life because they had deliberately entered it. The Second's cousin could have been useful, had their relationship not somehow evolved into an undeclared war before the other girl had arrived in Tokyo-3. The lack of decent leverage against the pilot had been frustrating to the Commander's habitual desire to always be in control of everything.

But the Fourth's comments before she was taken by EVA-01 exposed her one weakness: Despite the fact that she distanced herself from just about everyone in Tokyo-3, Kirika Yumura was afraid of being alone. She could not bear to lose the few people who she could bring herself to connect to. And that was something that Gendo could use against her.

It was a pity that this discovery had to be made after the matter of controlling her became a moot point.

* * *

Shinji looked around. He was standing on a cliff overlooking the ocean. Further up the cliff, he saw two figures facing each other, kneeling on the ground. As he approached them, he recognized them.

The figure on the right was his sister. But it wasn't his sister as he knew her. The cold expression he saw on her face was one he had only seen once: at the cemetery, as she stared at the Commanders retreating form. The figure on the left was strange. Every time he blinked or looked away, the figure changed. One moment the figure was that of Mireille, the next it would be that of Chloe. Both figures remained as still as statues, the swords in their hands held perfectly upright as they stared at each other, ignoring Shinji's presence completely.

Approaching cautiously, Shinji tried to get their attention, but they didn't even glance in his direction. As he circled the two women while trying to get them to react to his presence, his eyes met the gaze of his sister, who was currently looking at Mireille Bouquet.

Shinji suddenly found himself in a large room. Judging by the furnishings, whoever owned the place the room was in was quite wealthy. He tried to look around, and found that he couldn't. His gaze was moving about, but not in the directions he wanted to look. Neither could he move his hands, which were gripped around something metallic that he couldn't see because his eyes never turned in that direction.

The scent of blood thick in the air. As Shinji's vision traced across the room as if it had a mind of its own, he saw two bodies, one a middle aged man, and one a boy only slightly younger than him, and knew where the smell came from. His vision locked onto the only other person in the room, a woman in early middle age who resembled Mireille.

The woman looked straight at him and started to talk. Shinji didn't understand what she was saying, but he thought he heard Mireille's name being mentioned. As he tried to figure out what was going on, the scene faded, and he found himself back on the cliff.

* * *

Kirika looked around. She was in a train car. The car was empty, save for herself and a small boy. As she looked at the crying child, she recognized him. The child was Shinji, as he appeared in the photograph that had been taken a decade before. She laid one hand on the boy, and he looked up at her. As their eyes met, the world changed around her.

She was no longer on the train. She was standing at a train station, a large suitcase next to her. Everything looked unnaturally large to her, until she realized that the world hadn't gotten larger, she had gotten smaller. Standing in front of her was Commander Ikari, looking down at her with the same uncaring gaze that he used on just about everyone.

"B-But otou-san," She heard a young boy say, "Why isn't imouto-chan coming with me?"

The commander's response was blunt and direct. "I still have a use for her. You are of no use to me." With that, he turned and walked away, ignoring the sounds of a weeping child. As he did, Kirika realized that the voice of the boy had come from her. Was this something that had happened to Shinji, years ago?

Judging by the station clock, Shinji's new guardian didn't show up to pick up his ward for another hour. From the perspective of a child being smothered in grief, it felt more like years. Kirika watched the scene through his eyes, seeing what he saw, feeling what he felt. When Shinji's guardian finally arrived, obviously not caring about him as a person one bit, she realized with horror that her brother had been experiencing what she considered to be the ultimate nightmare for practically his entire life.

* * *

The class was the same size as it had been for the past month, but its composition had changed. For the first time in nearly two months, Rei had returned to class, confined to a motorized wheelchair due to her numerous injuries. One other student had not shown up.

"Where is Kirika?" Hikari asked Asuka.

"She's… with Shinji." Asuka said.

"Oh, that's right. He's been gone for about a month now, hasn't he? I can see why she'd want to be with her brother right now. Especially since…" Hikari didn't finish the sentence. She didn't have to. Every single person in the class knew what would happen if Shinji didn't recover within the next few days.

Sitting on the other side of the room, Chloe wondered why that short conversation caused a slight smile to appear on Rei's face.

* * *

Shaking his head in confusion, Shinji wondered what had just happened. It was as if a movie had been played in his head, except no movie extended to all five senses. Who were those people? What had happened to them? Why had he seen that event in the first place? It was all a mystery.

His sister was still kneeling in front of the continually changing figure, currently appearing to be Chloe. As he looked at the two, his eyes met his sister's again and he once again found himself in a different place.

He was standing in a pool of water not quite waist deep. He couldn't really see much of the scenery, because Chloe was standing in front of him, so close that all he could see of her without moving his head (which he couldn't do) was her face. Slowly, a hand placed itself behind Shinji's head, and he found himself being pushed into a kiss.

Shinji was still trying to grasp what was going on when he suddenly found himself standing in a ruin staring down the sight of a pistol at Mireille and Chloe. Mireille was lying on the ground clutching an injured leg. At another point in time Shinji might have found Chloe's appearance in the decidedly short toga she was wearing quite interesting, but by the look on her face, she was about ready to kill something.

As Chloe threw a knife at him and attacked in a berserk rage, it became clear that the person she was about to kill was him. As Shinji's arms somehow blocked all the attacks on instinct, strange thoughts passed through his head.

Why couldn't Chloe understand? She hadn't chosen Mireille over her. She didn't want to have to choose one over the other at all. She had tried to break up the fight so that she wouldn't have to lose either of them. Doing so by siding with Mireille was necessary because she was losing. She didn't care about the Trials. She would cheerfully opt out of them entirely if Altena would give her the option. All she wanted was for her friends to stop trying to kill each other so they could go back home.

Shinji had no clue what that had been about. Why had his thoughts referred to himself as female? What were the Trials? Who was Altena? Part of his answer came as Chloe continued screaming.

Chloe was screaming at him, her face twisted with a strange combination of grief and rage. Shinji didn't understand a word she was saying, or what a second person said in reply, but he did know who the person talking to Chloe was.

The second voice had come from Shinji's mouth. The voice was not his own, but it was one that he knew well. It was his sister's. Somehow, he was seeing events from Kirika's past, seeing what she saw, feeling what she felt.

As the ruins faded from view, Shinji felt that he understood what had come between his sister and Asuka's cousin better, but he still had far more questions than answers.

* * *

Kirika was back in the train car again. Looking away from the form of the younger Shinji, she headed to the next car. But when she passed through the door, she found herself walking into the same car she had left. She tried travelling the other direction, and found herself returning to the car again. Again and again she tried to leave the car, but she kept returning to the place she started.

This was irritating. She wanted to find Shinji, not wander around in an endless loop. At this rate, even if she did find him, it wouldn't matter, as she didn't have the slightest idea of how to get out of the car, or where this train car was relative to the entry plug she had started out in. After what seemed like half an hour of walking in circles, she gave up and sat down across from the weeping child. As she did, she made eye contact with the boy a second time.

She was lying in a hospital bed, looking up at an unfamiliar ceiling. Her head ached, but echoing through her mind was a mantra that brought with it a strange sense of comfort.

_I did it. I won. I'm useful to Father now. Now we can be together again._

That mantra echoed in Kirika's mind for hours as she lay in the bed. After a time, Misato arrived. Kirika her herself ask a question in Shinji's voice.

"Could I please speak with Kirika?"

"Kirika?" Misato sounded honestly confused about the question.

"My sister. I'd like to see her."

"I didn't know that your guardian was caring for any other children. I'll get in touch with him for you."

"No, when Father sent me off to my uncle, he kept her here. I need to see her, _please_."

"I didn't even know the commander had a daughter. There's only one person that he acts as guardian for, and her name isn't Kirika."

The comfort that had settled in her mind vanished, to be replaced by a sense of overwhelming grief. In less than a minute, ten years of hopes and dreams had washed away. Kirika tried to recoil in horror as she felt the full force of Shinji's pain as his memories passed before her eyes, but was unable to escape.

* * *

Shinji was back at the cliff, which looked the same as it had before he had had the visions of Kirika's past. Then something changed. Kirika started rising to her feet. She started walking towards Shinji, sword still gripped in her hand, the same emotionless expression on her face. Something in that expression and the slow, menacing pace she set made Shinji nervous.

"I-Imouto?" He asked.

Kirika's reply was cold and flat. "This ritual is not intended to be seen by outsiders. Leave."

Shinji froze, confused as to what was happening. That turned out to be a mistake. Kirika's grip on the sword shifted slightly, and she attacked. He barely managed to get out of the way of the first swing.

"Imouto, what are you _doing?_ "

Kirika continued her assault without bothering to respond. Shinji kept dodging the blade, trying to figure out what was going on. Even if he had had a weapon, he didn't want to hurt his sister. He didn't realize he was being herded until his foot nearly slipped on the edge of the cliff. He had been trapped, with no way to escape the heartless killer that wore his sister's face.

* * *

Kirika knew she had to get out of the train. She didn't think that she could stand experiencing any more of Shinji's memories. Compared to the turmoil of anguish and suffering that she had just been forced to relive, getting shot was a pleasant experience – she'd had training in how to endure the pain from physical injuries until she could get them treated properly. She absolutely had to get away from Shinji's doppelganger without making eye contact with it again.

All her previous attempts at leaving the car had been through the doors. Kirika walked up to a window and smashed it open. After breaking off enough glass to ensure she could crawl through without seriously injuring herself, she started wedging herself into the opening. She looked at the swiftly passing landscape. She looked back at the car. She compared the risks of jumping out of a speeding train against what might happen if she stayed in. She jumped.

The ground she landed on was hard and rocky, but she accepted the bruises and scrapes as a small price to pay for not being on the train anymore. She picked herself off the ground and started walking. She eventually wandered to a place that she had never been in her life, but recognized nonetheless.

Paintings at the Soldat Manor showed the anointing of the original Noir taking place on a cliff overlooking the sea. The cliff she was walking up appeared to be an exact replica of the cliff shown in that painting. Kneeling in the exact pose of that one of the Noir took in that picture was a figure that at one moment appeared to be Mireille and the next appeared to be Chloe. That actually made a peculiar sort of sense. There was never any doubt that Kirika would have been one of the two Noir had she chosen to accept the original purpose of the title. The question had been which of the other two would be the second Noir. But if one Noir was waiting in the position shown for the ritual, where was the other?

Kirika looked up towards the edge of the cliff and saw a second her closing in on Shinji, sword raised to strike. Trained reflex took over as she reached for her pistol, aimed quickly, and fired. As the second Kirika's sword came down, the bullet smashed into it, breaking the blade off just above the quillons. The double spun to face her attacker, broken hilt in hand, as a second shot rang out. The double tried to dodge, and almost succeeded. The bullet aimed at her heart struck her shoulder, causing her to stumble slightly. That turned out to be a serious mistake, as there wasn't much room to dodge on the cliff's edge, and the half step the second Kirika needed to steady herself was a half step more than there was ground for her to walk on. The doppelganger slipped and fell off of the cliff, vanishing from sight.

When Shinji saw Kirika, he started running towards her with a cry of joy. But whatever he was planning to do when they met didn't happen, as their gazes met during the approach, and both of them found themselves in the other's memories for a third time.

* * *

Shinji found himself in a NERV medical lab. The strange thing was that he appeared to be looking at himself. He saw Ritsuko walk across the room and address both him and the other him.

Shinji, this is Kirika, the Fourth Child. Kirika, this is Shinji, the Third. I believe that he's been looking for you for some time Ms Yumura. Or should I call you Ms _Ikari_?"

With that, she laid the printouts onto a table. The top page read:

**DNA Analysis Complete…**

**Subject: Yumura, Kirika**

**Immediate Genetic Ancestry: Ikari, Gendo; Ikari, Yui**

Shinji knew what he was seeing. This was the day he had been reunited with Kirika, only to discover that she didn't recognize him. As he found himself being joyfully glomped by himself, waves of sensations swept across him.

Happiness that there was at least one member of her family that remembered her and was willing to welcome her back. Fear that he would reject her if he ever learned that her hands were stained with blood. That fear was soon joined by several others.

Shinji blanched as he realized exactly what his sister had been forced to endure. She had watched a friend get murdered for no other reason than to make her suffer? One of Mireille's relatives was complicit in the murder of her parents and had tried to kill Kirika? One of _their parents_ had sold her out to the group that was trying to kill her? She thought that he might have been recruited into the same group?

Shinji finally understood what it was that had motivated her to push him away, even though she desperately did not want to.

* * *

Kirika was standing in a NERV medical lab, staring at a file, the top page of which read

**DNA Analysis Complete…**

**Subject: Yumura, Kirika**

**Immediate Genetic Ancestry: Ikari, Gendo; Ikari, Yui**

Looking up, she saw herself. She immediately knew what she was seeing. As Shinji's joy at being reunited with his sister rushed into her, Kirika started to panic. She knew what was going to happen. She knew that his happiness was to be short lived. And she did not want to feel what Shinji would be feeling when it abruptly ended. But she didn't have the slightest notion of how to break away from the memory, and within moments, she found herself hearing the words she dreaded.

"Do I know you?"

* * *

The two pilots were no longer in the medical lab, nor had they returned to the cliff. They didn't appear to be anywhere. All around them was nothing but white light in every direction. Shinji looked down at his sister with concern as she shivered in panic. Whatever it was that she had seen, it had shaken her badly. He laid a hand on her shoulder, and she turned and clung onto him, sobbing the words "I'm sorry" over and over again.

Shinji felt a second pair of arms wrap around the two of them.

"My poor children." A woman's voice said.

Shinji turned to see a woman holding onto him and his sister. The woman looked like an older Kirika, only with properly combed brown hair. Even though he hadn't seen her in years, and had completely forgotten her face, he knew who it was.

"K-Kaa-san?" He asked.

"Hello, Shinji. I'm sorry that you two have had to suffer the way you did. I wish I could make your pain go away, but I can't."

Kirika looked up and saw her mother's face. As Yui smiled at her daughter and wiped away her tears, Kirika panicked. She broke out of the embrace and backed away, drawing her gun as she did so. Yui was alarmed at her daughter's reaction, but Shinji understood: Because of her experiences, Kirika had no choice but to assume that her mother was connected to the group that had been trying to kill her. He placed himself between his mother and his sister and approached Kirika.

"It's alright, imouto," He said calmly, "I know that you're afraid that kaa-san might have been with the people who tried to hurt you. But she couldn't have! That didn't happen until after she left us! Kaa-san wouldn't want to hurt us! You can put down the gun."

Kirika's shaking hand remained pointed at her mother.

"If you were forced to choose between your family and your ambitions," She asked of her mother, "Which would you choose?"

"Kirika," Yui said, "You think I'd hurt my children to advance my career?"

"Would you make the same choice if you knew that by turning your back on your goals, you would be putting your life in danger?"

Yui didn't know what she could say that her daughter would consider proof. But there was something she could do. She stepped around her son, shielding him with her body, and walked to her daughter, arms spread wide to deliberately leave herself open to attack. When she reached her child, she embraced the girl, ignoring the weapon in favor of reaching out to the little girl she had loved before she had become trapped inside the Evangelion.

The gun dropped from Kirika's hand as she wept in her mother's arms. The three stood there together, enjoying the first chance they had had to be a family in ten years. It was with great reluctance that Yui eventually released her embrace.

"Shinji, Kirika, you have to go."

"But kaa-san!" Shinji objected.

"You two can't stay here; you still have things to do in the world outside. You need to go back. Just remember that I love you both."

With that, Yui faded away. The two siblings looked at each other, and then headed back to Tokyo-3.

* * *

The caretaker staff watching the over the readings from EVA-01's entry plug were settling in for another dull shift. Nothing had happened since the Fourth Child had been taken into the plug two days before, and nobody really expected anything to happen now. All that was likely to happen were a few minor fluctuations in the readings that were just more likely to be minor glitches in the sensors than any actual event, seeing as most of the variations they saw were within the margins of error for the system. As the sensors suddenly started picking up large amounts of activity within the plug, the staff realized that their assumption of a long and dull shift had been wrong. The chief of the watch immediately got onto the enunciator.

"Doctor Akagi, please come to the EVA hanger immediately. Doctor Akagi, please come to the EVA hanger immediately," Rang out over the public address system.

Ritsuko arrived eight minutes later.

"What's going on?" She demanded.

"Distinct currents are forming in the LCL in the entry plug, causing it to condense into two points. It's almost as if two parts of the liquid are trying to separate themselves from each other and the rest of the LCL."

"What?" Ritsuko shoved a man aside and stared at the monitor. The chief had been telling the truth. As she watched, the LCL inside the plug started flowing around two central points. As the flow went on, more LCL went into those points than went out, and the points slowly expanded. Something was filtering the LCL for some indeterminate quality, and systematically extracting that quality from all the LCL in the plug.

Three minutes after Ritsuko arrived, the points started solidifying and taking shape. Twenty minutes after that, the two shapes had resolved themselves two human shapes. Ritsuko didn't know how, but the Fourth Child had somehow managed to extract her brother from EVA-01 by going in after him. Ritsuko summoned a medic team to take charge of the pilots as the entry plug was ejected and drained.

* * *

With the pilots retrieved from the entry plug and carted away to the medical wing, technicians began the process of basic post-deployment maintenance that would have been given to it a month previously had Shinji not been trapped inside. As the pilots had not reformed inside the clothing they had been wearing when they were absorbed, part of that process involved removing the personal effects that they had left behind.

Masahiro was the person removing the various items that had been left in the plug. Two outfits, both of which had been marinating in LCL for quite some time and as a result were badly in need of laundering. Two student ID cards and one NERV ID card, all of them the Fourth's, one of which was for a school in a different prefecture. A gun, which had filled with LCL and would need to be cleaned before it could be used again. A pocketwatch, which would also need repairs due to how it had spent the weekend…

Masahiro nearly choked when he saw the emblem embossed on the battered watch. The Fourth Child was a Soldat? Suddenly the missions he had given from Noir made more sense. A Soldat agent was brought in as a reserve pilot. A few months later, he was called on to get information on another pilot, who then started having troubles which ultimately caused the second pilot to be shifted to reserve status and the Soldat put in her place. Now they had their agent in a very well placed situation.

The Fourth Child's effects were claimed by her guardian, who had been summoned when the pilots had been extracted from the plug. Masahiro concluded that Ms Bouquet was also a Soldat operative. Having a child be part of the organization without having a guardian knowing about it could only lead to complications down the line when the guardians started wondering what their child was doing when they were acting on orders from their superiors.

Little did he know that both of his deductions were completely wrong. He was also unaware that Mireille had spotted his reaction to the watch, and came to a more accurate conclusion concerning it.

* * *

The afternoon classes were going on when a cell phone started to ring. The entire class froze at the sound.

While students were allowed to bring phones to school, they were also instructed to have their phones set to vibrate and to answer calls between classes so that they wouldn't disrupt lessons. There were only four people exempt from that rule. Those four people were the EVA pilots. Their exemption stemmed from the fact that a call for them could be a message from NERV that another Angel was on the way, in which case they would need to know as soon as possible so they could get to the GeoFront and prepare to deal with the incoming attack. Everyone in the class knew that, and knew that if that was the case, they would need to head to the shelters immediately (Not that the shelters had done much good the last time).

Everyone in the room watched in tense silence as Asuka took the call. Asuka spoke with the person on the other end for about a minute and then hung up. Her classmates all looked at her, asking without words if there was another attack imminent. Asuka turned to the class.

"The call was from NERV," She said, and everyone tensed visibly. "Shinji just regained consciousness."

The class erupted in cheers. The month-long buildup of tension over the fate of the injured pilot had finally ended. The teacher didn't even try to regain control of the class for the remaining ten minutes before the class got out.

One student did not celebrate. Rei Ayanami was not happy about this turn of events. Her scheme to get revenge on the Third Child had been thwarted. There was the chance that the Fourth was still out of the picture, but she doubted that was the case. Her enemies were undiminished, and she had not managed to reclaim her purpose as the true pilot of EVA-00. Clearly she would have to find some other was of dealing with them.

As one Nephilim brooded over her failed plot, a second Nephilim noted her behavior and wondered why she alone was not getting caught up in the moment.

* * *

The black monoliths that were the 'public' face of the Human Instrumentality Committee surrounded the agent making his report.

"We have finished double-checking the inventory of Angel tissue cultures at every NERV branch. All of the inventories that we examined checked out, save for one."

"And which Branch was it that managed to lose part of an Angel?" SEELE 03 demanded.

"The tissue culture was stolen from NERV Germany, and was replaced with a very clever facsimile. The tissue culture in question was codenamed Adam."

The leaders of SEELE found that revelation to be highly alarming. Not only did the unknown group that had attacked a pilot created an Angel assassin, they had done so using the First Angel. It was entirely possible that they could be intending to trigger their own version of Third Impact with their tool.

"Do you know who is responsible for this?" SEELE 11 asked.

"Not at present. We have, however, managed to compile a list of every single person to have accessed the storage facility in which the sample was stored. We will be going over every person in the list until we identify the culprit. Most of the people on the list are still in Germany, but a few have since transferred to other branches."

"Focus your search in Germany. We will arrange for another to handle the other individuals in your list. That will be all" Keele ordered. The man nodded, and left the room. After he had left, the Committee looked over the provided list, noting with anger that one of their own agents, one Ryoji Kaji, was on it. A new person entered the room and spoke.

"You know, there is another way to find the All-Father if he has gone missing." The person said.

"You believe that you can track down this assassin?" SEELE 06 inquired.

"Oh, certainly," Kaworu Nagisa replied. "And I can't think of anyone else in the world who I would rather meet."

* * *

A/N: This was a tough chapter to write. I had a hard time figuring out what should be happening inside the plug.


	21. The Last True Soldat

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 21

The Last True Soldat

Gendo stormed out of the EVA cage. Two generations of Akagis had tried and failed to devise a method to retrieve a person who had been absorbed by an Evangelion. Gendo himself had schemed for a decade to achieve that same goal. And his daughter had succeeded in three days using a method she had apparently come up with on the spot, making all of them look like fools.

Could he have saved Yui if he had been willing to take the same risk ten years ago? Could they have been reunited without needing the scenario at all? He knew that question would be haunting his dreams for many nights to come. Then he considered what would have happened later on if he had succeeded in saving his wife. Altena's demand for Kirika would have come whether Yui was around or not. And Yui would not have accepted anything short of the truth once she wanted to know exactly why a person she thought was a high-school acquaintance of his would want to take away one of their children.

Once Gendo had admitted about Les Soldats to his wife, who was a SEELE operative, the only question would be which group's assassins would get to him first. The Committee would think that his sole reason for his relationship with Yui was so that Les Soldats could get an agent infiltrated into SEELE operations (Which, to be honest, was the logic behind his arranging to meet Fuyutsuki, and from there his student Yui, in the first place. The resultant relationship had not been formed on orders – though he had cleared it with his superiors), and want him dead. On the other side of the equation, the one line Yui would never cross in pursuit of her goals was her family. She would have refused to turn over her daughter, which would have caused Altena to order the deaths of him, Yui, and possibly Shinji for good measure, after which she would have taken Kirika anyway. So the opportunity he missed would have only gained him another month or so with his wife before he would have died.

So in the long run, it appeared that his scenario was the best way to be reunited with his wife. And it wasn't as if this incident hadn't helped advance the scenario. He now knew the means by which his daughter could be controlled. And if EVA-01 could still be used safely after taking in the S2 organ, then he now had an Evangelion with an infinite power supply. All he needed to do was have Rei be ready to deal with the Angel Assassin before the remaining three Angels were dealt with, and everything would be ready.

* * *

All three of the active pilots were gathered in Misato's apartment. Shinji and Kirika had been released from the hospital, and the group was gathered for dinner (Misato had offered to cook. Having been exposed to the Major's cooking during Shinji's absence, Asuka ordered take-out). As they ate, the topic of discussion was the various events that had happened while Shinji had been missing, and what the two siblings had experienced while inside the plug.

"The woman looked sort of like Mireille," Shinji said, "And I think she might have been talking about her. What was it she was saying, Vooley Prender…"

"Veuillez prendre soin de Mireille."

The rest of the group looked at Kirika as she calmly corrected and completed the sentence that Shinji had horribly mispronounced.

"What does it mean?"

"Please take care of Mireille. Both you and Mireille probably be exposed to harsh trials in the future. Please… lend her your strength. But remember, while it is true that love can sometimes destroy people, there is something else that you must never forget, that hatred can never save them. Never."

Everyone in the room caught the pain in Kirika's voice as she translated the sentence, and then went on to quote what had been said afterwords. Then Mireille asked "Kirika, were those…?"

Kirika nodded. "Your mother's last words."

Asuka's eyes widened with horror. "Mein Gott… You were _there?_ "

"Yes, I was there. So was Chloe. How do you think she knew who did it?"

While Asuka processed that, and the strange revelation that Kirika was technically Mireille's guardian when everyone in Tokyo-3 had assumed it was the other way around, Shinji rejoined the conversation.

"Imouto… does that mean your memories are coming back?"

"Some of them. The day Mireille's family died was about the earliest I can recall. I haven't been able to remember any memories of you from back then."

Shinji looked extremely disappointed about that. Misato diverted Shinji's thoughts away from that detail by asking him about what else he had seen. Shinji went on to describe the images he had seen that concerned Chloe. After he got through the first part, he looked up to see his sister blushing furiously and Asuka trying valiantly (and failing) to not laugh.

"Do you want to tell your brother about your not-so-secret admirer, Fourth Child, or should I?" Asuka choked out.

As Kirika was still too embarrassed to discuss the incident, Asuka continued. "Apparently, my cousin has had a very severe crush on your sister dating back to their days together at the school they were at, and your sister was too dense to notice. What you saw was her memory of an extremely blatant attempt to get her to realize this, which went completely over her head. Were there no nice boys at your old school, Kirika?" From Asuka's tone, it was clear that she was planning to milk this discovery – and the fact that it was the first thing they'd ever seen that flustered Kirika – for all it was worth. For at least a month.

"There weren't any boys at that school." Kirika admitted. "Not even among the teachers. And the nearest town was ten miles away, through mountain back roads. I think Shinji might be the first boy that Chloe ever got the chance to really know."

"Oh, so she's never had a boyfriend, then? Maybe a boy would actually manage to notice her feelings better than you did then? Maybe you should give it a try, Third Child."

As Asuka said that, Shinji recalled seeing Chloe's figure in the rather brief toga in the other scene he'd viewed and blushed slightly. Sensing blood in the water, Asuka proceeded to tease both siblings mercilessly. Her comments had absolutely nothing to do with whether or not she thought either Ikari would be a good match for her cousin, and everything to do with the fact that she had found something that could make both of them squirm.

As Asuka enjoyed herself tormenting the Ikaris, something occurred to Shinji. When he relived Kirika's memories of the fight and meeting him, he felt what she had felt at that time. But in the other memories, he felt nothing from her. Was there some reason why the earlier memories didn't replay the emotions that went with them?

Or was nothing what Kirika had felt at that time?

* * *

The pilots' class was glad to see the return of the two siblings. It took Hikari three tries to get the class to turn their attention to the teacher instead of Shinji. Classes proceeded normally until the literature class came up. Unlike many of the early morning classes, the literature teacher actually tried to talk about the alleged course material instead of Second Impact. He also tried to get the students to actively discuss the course material in class.

Kirika had no real interest in literature. As such, she rarely participated in the debates. In fact, she had only done so once, when the teacher had tried to claim that the meaning behind a reading assignment was that the value of a human life was immeasurable and absolute. He was very surprised when Kirika flatly told him that the value of human life was both variable and subjective. That debate had lasted the entire class, and had ended when Kirika pointed out that if the teacher believed that killing one person to protect another was justifiable, then he had just declared that the value of the person being protected was greater than the person being protected from. That had been the first time the teacher had lost a debate with the class, and nobody had forgotten it. Which was why everybody paid attention when Kirika decided to participate a second time.

The story that the class had been reading had centered on the subject of vengeance. The teacher was trying to argue the point that vengeance solved nothing.

"That's not always true." Kirika said.

"What do you mean?"

"Vengeance is about balancing out wrongs. What you call justice is just vengeance institutionalized. Society claims that only certain parties are allowed to seek vengeance, and they are only allowed to do so in defined ways. The problem is that once you make vengeance go through channels, it becomes easier to subvert. If the official channels don't know of the wrong, or are the source of the wrong, then they can't function."

"Who watches the watchmen?"

"Exactly. If a society cannot or will not balance the scales, those who are wronged can only get the balance they wish by doing so themselves. The only advantage of justice over vengeance is that if the system balances the scales, the scales stay balanced on that issue. Far too many cases of so-called vengeance are people deciding they liked the scales being unbalanced in their favor and so they deliberately unbalance them, seeking vengeance for vengeance."

"Can you provide an example of that?"

"Have you ever heard of a man named Yuri Nazarov? He was an old man living as a social worker in St Petersburg. He was murdered last year, despite the fact that he was a sick old man who probably would have died of natural causes within a few weeks anyway had he been left alone. Is this a wrong?"

Everyone in the class nodded. Kirika continued.

"But Major Yuri Nazarov of the KGB was a mass murderer who ordered genocidal purges upon the Tatar minorities who lived in his sector. Given the crimes of his earlier years, was his death really a wrong?"

The class looked uncertain.

"But his atrocities against the Tatars were committed because they burned down his home village and killed most everyone there when he was a youth. Given that he was just seeking revenge, is his death a wrong? If you trace back further, Nazarov's people had been killed because of a crime they had committed against the Tatars, which was in retaliation against a crime committed against them, and so on. The chain of atrocities and counter-atrocities goes back for at least three hundred years, and I doubt anyone remembers which side started it. Or why.

"Only the first retaliatory strike was actually vengeance. Everything beyond that was just the bloody-mindedness of two groups who refused to let the other side have the last word. The feud ended with the death of a sick old man who was the last survivor of his side of the feud. I wonder if the Tatars even know what they won by having him killed.

"I don't see anything wrong with vengeance as vengeance. The problem comes when people think that an act of vengeance needs to be avenged, which needs to be avenged, and so on until it spreads onto people who have nothing to do with the original issue."

* * *

Most of the class wasn't sure what to make of Kirika's comments about vengeance. In some ways, it seemed like she had out-debated herself. Chloe wasn't one of them. She knew exactly what the other Noir was trying to say, as the message had been meant for her and her alone. Kirika had been trying to make a point about seeking vengeance for Altena's death.

Mireille had killed Altena. But that was in vengeance for Altena ordering the death of Mireille's parents. If Chloe sought vengeance for vengeance, things would only get out of control. Chloe would kill Mireille. Kirika would kill Chloe. Asuka would kill Kirika (In theory, at least. The odds that she would actually succeed were virtually zero). Shinji would kill Asuka. One of Asuka's parents would kill Shinji. And there it would stop, mainly because Shinji's father didn't care about the welfare of his children and therefore couldn't be bothered to seek vengeance on their behalf.

Chloe knew that the Bouquets had been killed for breaking with Les Soldats. But the cause of that break was because they didn't want their daughter to become Noir. If they had gotten their way, Mireille would never have become a Sapling, would never have met Kirika, and would never been in a position to interfere with Les Grand Retour. Chloe would have come out ahead if that had happened.

Even if Chloe accepted that the death of the elder Bouquets had been justified, she couldn't make that argument about Mireille's brother. Jacques Bouquet had only been twelve when he died. He probably had never head of Les Soldats, let alone committed a crime against them. His death was a murder ordered simply because Altena thought it would be easier to have Mireille trained without being influenced by a relative out of her control.

That was the message that Kirika had been trying to send. Altena had wronged Mireille by ordering the death of kin who had not deserved to die. Mireille had killed Altena. The scales had been balanced. Let it go.

She would have to put some thought into that.

* * *

Masahiro carefully entered his forged account information into the secure MAGI terminal. He had been unable to find any other way to track down the information on Ayanami that Noir had requested he find. As he wouldn't dream of telling the single most dangerous agent of Les Soldats that he could not complete his mission, he was forced to steal the data straight out of NERV's mainframe.

Had he attempted this before the attack of the 9th Angel, he might have succeeded in getting the data he was after without tripping any alarms. But Section 2 had learned that the blackout that happened during that attack had been man-made, and from there concluded that NERV had been infiltrated by hostile elements. And they had come to the conclusion that just because the first attack on the facilities had been made on the GeoFront's infrastructure, the next one didn't necessarily have to be of the same nature. As a result of this, additional security precautions had been added to the MAGI. Among them being protocols that double-checked the accounts of secure logins, and informed Section 2 if anything out of the ordinary was found.

Because the new security protocols didn't interrupt his download (Something they had been designed to do in order to lull intruders into a false sense of security), he didn't know that he had been caught until a pair of Section 2 agents had tracked him to the secure terminal and cuffed him.

* * *

Three hours had passed since Masahiro had been caught red-handed in an act of espionage. Section 2 had been attempting to interrogate him that entire time. He hadn't said a word since he had been captured, determined to remain loyal to Les Soldats to the end. Despite his defiance, he knew that sooner or later it would turn out to be futile. Eventually the guards would tire of standard interrogations and try some form of chemical interrogation.

The funny thing was, half of the things they were accusing him of he had absolutely nothing to do with. He didn't have the slightest notion as to who sabotaged the power grid. He knew it wasn't him, because he had been robbing the secure storage area at the time. He also had nothing to do with the attack on the Second through Fourth Children, even if he had probably been indirectly involved with the attack on the First Child. But trying to point out any of those details would just get him into even more trouble.

As the interrogator leaned back in his chair in frustration at his subject's continued lack of cooperation, a woman entered the room, carrying a burn bag. Masahiro recognized the woman as the guardian of the Fourth Child, and a fellow Soldat. The disc containing the data he had stolen was placed in the bag for later disposal – it wasn't as if they needed it to prove his guilt. As the woman left, he felt something get dropped into his hand – a length of wire.

As the next round of questioning commenced, Masahiro worked at picking the lock of his handcuffs. Finally, the interrogator gave up and ordered some additional guards to take him to a cell to stew while they decided whether or not to use more strenuous interrogation methods on him. As the guards pulled Masahiro from his chair, he took his chance.

Slipping his right hand out of the opened cuff, he grabbed the gun out of one guard's holster and started shooting. When the man he'd robbed tried to grab him, he elbowed the guard in the gut with strength born from sheer desperation. The guard fell back, gasping for breath. Masahiro dropped the empty gun, grabbed the burn bag, and ran.

Masahiro didn't know how he managed it, but he managed to get to the car trains undetected. Once there, he managed to escape the GeoFront by clinging to the undercarriage of a car that was leaving. After reaching the surface, he made his way to the dead drop that Noir had instructed him to use. But when he reached into the burn bag, he found an unexpected surprise there.

The bag held more than one disc. In fact, there were five discs, all of which were unlabeled. He had no way to tell which disc held the information he was told to retrieve, or what was in the other discs at all. But if they had been in the bag when the Soldat put it in a situation where he could get to it, then she probably wanted them to go out as well. He placed all of the discs in the dead drop, and headed off to set a flag that meant 'Goods delivered, but am compromised. Do not contact again'.

Masahiro started heading to his home. It was a risk, but he needed to grab a few things before he could make an escape from the city and from there the country. He tensed when he realized that his apartment wasn't empty. Then he sighed with relief when he recognized the other person as the woman who helped him escape.

"Thanks for getting me out of there." He said.

"It was nothing. Did the files get out?" She replied.

"They're in the pipeline. They'll make it out soon enough."

"Good. Now we just need to take care of you. Take this." Masahiro caught the object she lightly tossed to him. He looked at the object with confusion.

"A knife?" He asked, drawing it from the sheath. "How is this going…"

Before he could finish the question, the other Soldat drew her weapon and shot him. Masahiro fell to the ground, dying from a bullet wound to the chest. As the light slowly faded from his eyes, he heard the woman who betrayed him call in to Section 2.

"This is Agent Bouquet. I've found Ishikawa. He returned to his apartment to pick up some false identity papers. When I confronted him, he attacked with a knife. He's dead. Unfortunately, he must have passed of the files he stole to someone else before he came here, because he doesn't have them on him."

Masahiro's last thoughts were to wonder how one Soldat could betray another, and what Mireille Bouquet had been planning when she used him to deliver the four discs that she had put into the bag.

* * *

Kaji knew he was being followed. He wasn't sure who was following, but as a spy who had betrayed two dangerous groups and had killed a member of a third group, it wasn't like there was a shortage of people who might be after him.

Using every trick he had in his repertoire, Kaji tried to shake his followers, but the group that had sent them after him had apparently invested enough men into tailing him that he couldn't escape all of them, and he eventually found himself cornered in the warehouse district.

"Had enough of running, have you?" Asked one of his pursuers rhetorically. "You might as well come quietly, now. The Committee said they wanted to talk to you, but they didn't say they needed us to bring you in unharmed."

That explained who was after him, at least. Knowing that SEELE was the group after him reduced the number of reasons why they might be after him, but it didn't help him get out of the mess. But help did come, in the form of one man crying out in pain as he fell to the ground, a knife in his neck. As his pursuers' eyes turned to look for who had done that, Kaji made a break for cover, hiding behind a stack of crates. He drew his gun and turned to help fight off his enemies now that he was less exposed, but when he looked around his cover, he quickly realized that his help wasn't necessary.

The cloaked figure facing the SEELE agents was hopelessly outnumbered. Despite that, it was the SEELE agents who were the ones who were clearly out of their league. Trying to hit the girl was like trying to hit a ghost. The girl that Kaji recognized as Asuka's cousin knew exactly where every one of her enemies was, and knew exactly how much she needed to move to avoid an attack from any one of them. A minute and a half after the first man fell; the only people still alive in the warehouse were Kaji and Chloe.

"You can come out now." Chloe said. Kaji did so.

"Thank you for assistance, Miss Langley. Might I ask how a Soldat enforcer learned that SEELE would be targeting me in time to come to my aid? The chase didn't go through the part of town you live in, so it couldn't be by chance."

"Associates of mine intercepted an order to those men to have you secured. I figured that you might know something of interest to me if SEELE was that interested in you. And seeing how you managed to learn my name and affiliation so easily, I can certainly understand why they'd want to have you questioned, Mr…"

"Ryoji Kaji. I learned of you and your organization from a certain DGSE agent of your acquaintance."

"I don't know anyone in the DGSE."

"Yes you do. A woman named Mireille Bouquet."

Chloe snorted. "Just because the DGSE isn't as well known as some of the other intelligence services out there doesn't make them incompetent. Mireille may have buried her family history well enough to avoid drawing attention to it from a casual investigation, but a major intelligence service would look deeper than that. They'd never have issued a clearance to the daughter of a mob boss. Mireille Bouquet is a free agent, and always has been. You've been played, Mr Kaji. Now, why was SEELE so interested in you?"

Kaji winced. One of the basic premises that he had been operating under for months had turned out to be wrong. How many of the conclusions he had made based on that presumption were also wrong? And how did Section 2's security screening miss a detail like that? Though given how they failed to notice that Kirika Yumura's file was a complete fabrication, perhaps that shouldn't have been too much of a surprise.

But even though Chloe had just saved his life and given him some very interesting information, he knew that he couldn't trust her too far.

"How do I know you won't try to kill me the moment I finish telling you what I know like your associate did to Doctor Shimizu?"

"What are you talking about? I called in an interrogator to debrief Shimizu, not an executioner. If I wanted her dead, I would have handled it myself."

"I was there when your man tried to kill her. I'm sure you can understand why I can't trust a Soldat to deal in good faith."

Chloe's eyes narrowed. "If you interrupted him, then that would explain why I never got the report from that debriefing. And if he couldn't follow simple instructions, then he deserved his fate. All he needed to have done was kept her incommunicado until I finished my assignment and left town. She didn't know nearly enough to be a threat.

"We appear to be at an impasse here. I need to know what you know, but you can't trust me to not kill you once you do. Is there some way to make you trust me enough to talk?"

Kaji considered it. "Toss your knives over to the side of the warehouse. You won't be able to reach them before I can escape if you double-cross me, and I doubt I could shoot you before you rearmed if I tried to double-cross you."

"No, you couldn't. Very well, then." Chloe unhooked a harness holding a large number of throwing knives from her back, and tossed it across the room.

Kaji started talking. About SEELE and the mysterious Human Instrumentality Project. How the Marduk Institute was nothing more than a front for SEELE and its agents in NERV. How he was spying on them on behalf of Gendo Ikari (among other parties), who he knew had Soldat connections, and had stolen a frozen Angel on his behalf several months previously. He also added in what he had learned about Gendo and his schemes, as he didn't know whose side Ikari was on, other than his own.

"Interesting," Chloe said when he finished. "If you're in contact with Bouquet, then there's very little I can tell you that she hasn't told you herself. You'd best disappear for a while. Once this group fails to report in, SEELE will realize something is wrong and send some more people to look for you."

Kaji nodded, and then started backing out of the warehouse. Once he had left the building, he contacted his superiors about getting an immediate extraction. The Soldat was right in that point: He was now burned, and had to get out of the area immediately. Whatever happened in Tokyo-3 next, it would have to happen without him.

* * *

Chloe made her way back to her apartment. Her meeting with the operative had been informative, but unfortunately the information she had gained didn't really get her any close to the answers she was seeking. As she walked down the street, she noticed a pattern of scratches etched into the side of a lamppost. She then diverted from her originally planned route and made her way to the dead drop. Picking up the discs, she resumed her journey home. It was a pity about the loss of her contact – she didn't exactly have many alternate sources available. But at least he had gotten the data out before he had to flee.

Once she made it home, Chloe started to examine the information she had retrieved. Given the capacity of the discs, Ayanami's medical records had to be enormous in order to take up five of them. She put the first disc into her computer. It turned out to be a record of last week's shift passwords. She removed it and tried a second disc. Both it, and the disc that followed it, were worthless. The information inside was technically sensitive, but it was also obsolete and of no use to her. Ishikawa must have had to grab every disc around him while getting away in the hopes that he'd get the correct one.

The fourth disc held the information she had been looking for. Some of it, at least. It appeared that some of the files were only partial, as if the download had interrupted before it could be completed. She started a program she had been given before coming to Japan that could read partial files and then looked at the only complete file.

The file turned out to be a report on Ayanami's emergency surgery following the injuries she had received in the battle with the 13th Angel. Chloe winced in sympathy as she cataloged the enormous list of injuries. The girl had been lucky to still be alive when she made it into the operating room to begin with. Had Chloe ever met someone that mangled, she would have killed the person on the spot and considered it an act of mercy. But several comments in the file were even more unusual. Why did Ayanami have an extra organ that nobody on the surgical team could identify? And even more interesting – why did the report say that Ayanami had apparently never sustained an injury before in her life? Chloe knew from personal experience that the other girl had, at the very least, sustained two very severe penetration wounds. Gossip at school stated that she had been hospitalized from training accidents on two separate occasions, one of them resulting in Ayanami's arm being in a sling for weeks. But the file seemed to claim that she had never suffered anything that left a lasting mark on her body, not even something as insignificant as acne. And having seen Ayanami's apartment, Chloe knew that anyone who lived in such an unhygienic dump for more than a few days was asking for some kind of skin condition.

Chloe rubbed her arms as she puzzled out what she had just read. Then she realized something was wrong and rubbed them again, more slowly. Finally she turned her arm and looked at it very closely.

The first time she and Kirika had ever trained with live blades, Kirika had gotten a hit in on her left forearm. The wound had been minor, but it had left a scar. The scar was narrow enough that it was easily missed if you didn't look at it from a certain angle, but Chloe had always known where it was, and knew exactly what it felt like when she touched it. But looking down on her arm, the scar was not there.

How had the evidence of an injury years old vanished from her body? She knew that a lot could be done with cosmetic surgery, but why would anyone bother concealing the remains of such a minor injury? It wasn't as if it was any kind distinguishing feature that she needed to hide – it was small enough that it couldn't be seen under the leather vambraces she wore while on missions. Even if the scar could be concealed that perfectly, there wasn't a point in doing so. Another point of commonality between her and Ayanami. Chloe had to wonder if she had a 'tumor' in the same place that Rei did. Looking up the name of the facility the mystery organ had been sent to, she wasn't surprised to learn that it had burned down the night most of the surgical team that discovered the organ was killed.

The partial file didn't have much information in it. Chloe tried to examine it, but too many sections were missing for it to make any sense. She did notice terms that weren't normally used in medical reports, such as 'upload', appeared frequently, but she couldn't figure out what they meant. Every section cut off before it could get into details that would explain what they were about. Eventually, she gave it up as another dead end.

On a whim, Chloe decided to see what was in the final disc. It contained something she definitely hadn't expected. A detailed surveillance report on Mireille Bouquet, dating from shortly before Altena's death. It appeared that Section 2 could do a fairly thorough job of watching somebody when they put their minds to it. Chloe had to wonder how many people they had needed to observe her this thoroughly. The single most glaring point in the report was the fact that Kirika's presence was not mentioned in most of the file. In fact, her absence was pointed out repeatedly, as if she had just dropped off the map.

Chloe formed a timeline in her head. Kirika vanished. Mireille wandered about Paris for two weeks, then disappeared for one day (Despite the thorough job that Section 2 had done when following Mireille on her regular routine, they apparently had lost her almost immediately once she decided she didn't want to be followed). The next day, Kirika and Mireille reappeared in Paris. And the day they were both missing was the day Altena died.

The timeline implied that Kirika had not told Mireille where to find the manor. Had she done so before she vanished, they would have traveled there together, killed Altena, and returned without the two week delay. But how could Mireille have found the manor without Kirika's help? It didn't appear on any map. Nobody who wasn't a senior Soldat or a resident of the area even knew it existed. Les Soldats had even somehow managed to get every photographic satellite in orbit to send falsified images of the area so that nobody could tell that the valley the manor was located in even existed. Without the aid of a Soldat, there was no real chance of finding the manor.

Looking back over the files, Chloe found that Mireille had been approached by someone who she thought she recognized two days before Altena died. And if that man was who she thought it was, then she had been plotting vengeance on the wrong person. The scales between Altena and Mireille might have been balanced with Altena's death, but the scales between Altena and the man who deliberately arranged for Mireille to be in a position to kill Altena were most definitely not. Chloe would have to correct that.

But first, she had to confirm this information. Chloe donned her cloak and headed back out into the night.

* * *

Mireille was woken by the sound of her door creaking open. She had left the hinges so that they would make a slight noise for that very purpose. She reached for the gun on her dresser, but as her hand closed on the grip, she felt something cold and sharp rest against her throat.

"Don't call out." Whispered a voice that she recognized as Chloe's.

"What do you want?" She whispered back.

"Information."

"Couldn't you have just asked during the day?"

"This is a matter that only concerns Saplings. I don't want anyone else involved in this. Do you remember a certain valley you were in the day before you were first approached by NERV?"

Mireille nodded slowly.

"Who told you how to find that valley?" Chloe demanded.

Mireille carefully described the Soldat leader known as Remy Breffort, right down to the falcon-headed cane he carried with him at all times. Chloe nodded thoughtfully as she considered the description.

"And did this gentleman ask you to kill a woman residing in the valley in return for that information?"

Mireille gulped. This was the riskiest part of the gamble she had made. Chloe had definitely gotten the files she had slipped to Ishikawa when she helped him escape, as she had thought she would when Mireille learned that the Soldat agent had been trying to steal Ayanami's medical records. Chloe had read the files and learned that she had gotten the location of the Soldat Manor, and from there Altena, from a Soldat. Now the only question was whether Chloe would want to kill both of them or just the Soldat. Mireille nodded, praying that it would not be the last thing she did.

A minute passed by as if it was an hour. Then Chloe put away the knife and stepped away. As she turned to leave, she softly said "Thank you for your help."

Mireille let out the breath she had been holding after the other girl had left. Her plan had worked. Chloe now knew that the power struggle in Les Soldats' leadership had escalated to the point where they were willing to murder each other. And by doing so, they had marked themselves as renegades by their own laws.

Breffort and his lackeys wouldn't know what hit them.

* * *

Shinji wasn't exactly sure why he did it. It might have been the fact that a combination of watching some of Kirika's memories and enduring Asuka's teasing had drawn his attention to the fact that Chloe could be attractive. It could have been a desire to help unsnarl the numerous issues between Chloe and his sister. It might also have been due to the fact that he hadn't seen Kirika do much for the sake of personal amusement since she had finished painting her last landscape – two months ago.

He had asked both of them if they wanted to see a movie that was coming out that Friday.

Kirika, it turned out, had either never seen a movie before in her life or had last seen one so long ago that she didn't remember it. She agreed to the idea after a few moments of thought. Strangely, given how much Asuka said Chloe loved movies, she was the one who turned down the proposition. She said that she would be busy with something the entire weekend and wouldn't be available. She refused to say exactly what she would be doing, but was adamant about her claim that it would take the _entire_ weekend.

The excursion was rescheduled for the following weekend. Shinji had no way of knowing exactly how eventful that evening was going to turn out.

* * *

Breffort was talking with one of his associates on the phone when he heard the door open. He lowered the phone.

"I thought I had left orders that I was not to be disturbed when making business calls…" He said angrily. His tone dropped from anger to shock when he saw who had just entered his study.

"Did you really think that you would get away with it, Remy?" Chloe hissed softly.

"What are you…" This did not look good. He slowly pushed the speakerphone button. He had a feeling that his associate would want to know what was happening. It could end up being the only record of his death.

"You wanted to abort Altena's plans for Le Grand Retour, but you couldn't do so without betraying Les Soldats. So you told Mireille where to find Altena, knowing that she would seek revenge against the one who ordered her family's execution. And when she opted to remain a free agent instead of your pawn, and took Kirika with her, you tried to maneuver me into killing them for you in order to cover up your treason. It almost worked. But I'm afraid you failed. And there is only one penalty for traitors to Les Soldats."

Breffort paled. His brilliant plan to create his own Noir to cement his control over Les Soldats had backfired spectacularly. Somehow, the renegade Noir had managed to turn the clone of Chloe against him. After all, it wasn't possible for him to betray the organization. He _was_ the organization. It was Altena who had betrayed them by seeking to wrest control away from him with that outdated ritual.

A voice sounded out over the phone. "Chloe, you will stand down. The order for Altena's removal was handed down unanimously by the Inner Circle. Mr Breffort was only acting as our agent in this matter."

Remy let out the breath he had been holding as the cloaked figure considered that. Then Chloe smiled slowly. It was not a smile indicating fondness. It was more like a predator smiling at the sight of prey.

"So you were all in on it? I was prepared to think that only one of you was guilty. But if all of you conspired to murder the High Priestess, then I'll just have to kill all of you."

So much for that hope. Instead of saving him, his colleague had doomed them all.

"Chloe! You are Noir! The Black Hand of Les Soldats! You answer to us!" Remy screamed.

"As Noir, my loyalty is to the High Priestess, not the councilors who betrayed her. I'm willing to accept that Mireille had a valid grievance against Altena, but you people aided because you were afraid she might be able to reclaim all of the power that you and your successors had stolen away from the High Priestesses since the time of the last Noir.

Chloe drew her dagger and advanced on Breffort. Breffort pulled a gun out of his desk drawer and tried to shoot the assassin, but the bullets all bounced off an invisible wall before they could strike. What on earth had they created when they resurrected her?

"It is the duty of all agents of Les Soldats to destroy those who betray it. If I am the last true Soldat, then so be it."

* * *

A/N: Shinji did not notice what Chloe was wearing (or more accurately, not wearing) during the kiss. And none of the girls who know about that detail have any intention of bringing that detail up around him.

Of course Kirika considers the value of human life to be variable. In her world, the value of a human life is the amount her client is willing to pay her to end it.

Why is it that Rei never gets any health problems from her poor living conditions? At the very least I'd expect her to get her injuries from the activation accident at the beginning of the series to get infected.

Was Noir intended to only answer to the High Priestess? Probably not. But since all training and indoctrination of Noir was handled by a High Priestess who wanted to use them to leverage herself into control of the organization, it's entirely plausible that she told them that.


	22. Repercussions

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 22

Repercussions

Chloe reached over the form of the newly deceased Remy Breffort and hung up the phone. Her journey had revealed a very unpleasant truth: the corruption in Les Soldats that Altena had devised Le Grand Retour to counter had completely subsumed the organization. She had come to eliminate one traitor, only to learn that everyone was guilty. She had just declared war against the most powerful organization in the world.

She knew that she would have some time. The remaining leaders would undoubtedly spend some time arguing amongst themselves as to who was in charge with Breffort dead. But the first order the winner of that argument would give was obvious. Chloe would soon be labeled as a traitor, to be killed on sight. They didn't have a choice, really. Even if they wanted to ignore centuries of precedent and let her go, her own words had told them that she would kill them all unless they killed her first.

Chloe knew that they didn't have a single person capable of posing a threat to her directly. If they had, they'd have used that person during the Trials. But the fact that they couldn't hope to take her down in a man-to-man engagement would simply mean that they would attack her in some other manner. There were numerous situations in which a knife was a useless weapon, such as when facing sniper fire. And that didn't even take into account various weaknesses which were a byproduct of what made her such a deadly fighter.

Chloe was a master of stealth and blades. But that was the limit of her skills. She had no real training in how to track opponents by any means other than the traces they left in the terrain they had recently passed through. The art of acquiring informants and gathering intelligence to locate someone to within the localized area where brute-force interrogation and traditional tracking was useful was something she never learned. She had always used Soldat contacts to do that kind of work and those contacts were likely to disappear in the immediate future. Her Soldat provided bank accounts would almost certainly vanish at the same time, leaving her totally without resources.

In order to track down the senior Soldats who would undoubtedly be going to ground once they knew of her actions, she would need the skills of someone who knew how to find the hiding places of people who didn't want to be found. Someone who could defend herself against any Soldat retaliation against such inquiries, who would not be scared off by such actions, and had absolutely no loyalty to any member of Les Soldats. The only name that came to Chloe's mind wasn't one that she liked, but she didn't have much of a choice. In order to destroy the traitors who had conspired to have Altena killed, Chloe would need the help of Mireille Bouquet.

But first, Chloe needed to rectify her upcoming cash flow problem. Breffort's habit of insisting that his staff not disturb him in his office, combined with his having the office soundproofed, would work in her favor. She started rifling through his files, looking for any banking information she could find. Looting whatever accounts she could find without leaving a trail that Les Soldats could easily find would extend her trip beyond a weekend excursion, but a day or two of missed classes wasn't all that important in the larger picture.

* * *

_Wealthy Philanthropist Found Murdered!_

_Industrialist Remy Breffort, who was well-known throughout the country for his contributions to charity, was found dead in his office in his villa south of Lyon last night. Breffort (62) had been killed by an unknown assailant with a knife at least four hours before the body was discovered._

_His body had been discovered his maid, Yvonne Duquette (27), when he failed to show up for dinner or inform his staff that he would be working through the meal. Police have yet to identify the killer or the motive for the murder._

_Breffort was born in …_

Mireille read the article she had pulled up on her computer and smiled. Breffort had schemed one time too many, and the consequences had just caught up with him. She wondered how his colleagues would react to this event.

* * *

Kaworu wandered the streets of Paris and Lyon, searching for signs of his father. He had been readying himself to travel to Tokyo-3 to seek out the so-called 'Angel Assassin' when he had heard the siren call of Adam's power ringing out from somewhere near the capital of France. He had promptly set aside his plans for Japan to seek out his father. The lead that Kaworu had discovered had gone a long way to explain why all of the siblings that had come before him had failed to find Adam. After all, there was no way anyone could find the person they searched for if they looked on the wrong continent. He wondered how NERV had managed to lure the others so far off the scent. But so far, he hadn't seen a trace of Adam beyond that first initial call.

Kaworu wasn't sure who the 'Angel Assassin' was. Ten of his fifteen siblings were right out, as they had died before that assassin first appeared. He knew it wasn't him. That left only four of the Messengers that it could be, two of whom had fallen since the attack on the First Child. But he didn't think that any of his remaining siblings would have acted like that. Even if any of them would, they would have then gone on to try to force their way into NERV and the putative prison of Adam, which hadn't happened. The only remaining option he could think of was that some human had managed to create a servant that partook of the nature of the Messengers, as they had when they had created the Evangelion.

After several days of searching, Kaworu was forced to admit to himself that his search in France had come to a dead end. If Adam had been here, he had since moved on. He would have to move on to his only other lead. If the assassin truly was Angelic in nature, then perhaps its creators would know where his father was. It was something he would have to ask when he tracked that person down.

* * *

The remaining leaders of Les Soldats had spent several days in frantic discussions with each other. Breffort's brilliant plan to create an effectively unkillable Noir that answered to him had backfired spectacularly. The copy had retained the intense loyalty the original had held towards her trainer, and had learned that they had conspired to remove Altena before she could supplant them. The result of that was that after ten years of effort to create Noir, all they had to show for it was a large amount of lost resources and the creation of an extremely deadly killer who wanted them all dead and two more who might not be prepared to go out of their way to kill them, but wouldn't hesitate to do so if their paths ever crossed.

The absolute first thing they did was relocate themselves. Chloe knew exactly who they were, so if they wanted to survive, they had to make sure they weren't at their addresses of record when she decided to visit them. Once their short-term safety was ensured, they proceeded to start arguing as to who was responsible for their last Noir going renegade.

Some of them claimed to fix the blame on others in the group for failing to properly indoctrinate Chloe into their interpretation of Soldat dogma before sending her out. Others claimed that cloning the Sapling had been a bad idea from the start. All of them ignored the fact that trying to commission the death of one of their own was a clear violation of what was considered the acceptable bounds of what Soldats could do to each other in the name of political infighting, and that as a result Chloe had every right to hunt them down and kill them. None of them regretted their actions in that matter at all. All they regretted was they fact that someone who had the will and ability to call them on it had found out.

One member of the group eventually brought up the point that before her betrayal, Chloe had been in near constant contact with two other unpunished renegades and a non-Soldat who was apparently a relative of hers and postulated that some combination of that group had seduced her loyalties away from her proper masters. It was proposed that a replacement Chloe might be more loyal if the people who inspired the disloyalties in the current one were eliminated.

That proposition was considered, but tabled when it was pointed out that all three of the prospective targets were directly connected with the Angel War, and that an unsuccessful attempt to kill them while the war was being fought could cause serious complications for the organization as a whole. So it was decided to wait until after the end of the war before arranging for some fatal accident to occur to them. The decision of whether or not to create a new Chloe could wait until then as well.

But one thing they did agree on: If they were to survive, the current Chloe had to be terminated. Soldats throughout the world were notified of Chloe's treason, along with warnings to not attack her directly. They also moved to freeze the accounts that had been set up for her, but soon discovered that she had already emptied them out. Later investigation would show that she had also cleaned out several accounts that Breffort had controlled for good measure. Their newest and most implacable enemy had acquired a substantial war chest for her vendetta while they were arguing.

* * *

Asuka didn't know what her cousin was doing during that busy weekend she had planned. She did know that whatever it was, it had kept her busy until late Tuesday, with no explanation as to why she had missed two days of school when she arrived at class the next day. She also didn't explain why she spontaneously chose to move to a new apartment right after school let out.

Something was bothering Chloe. Asuka didn't know what, and couldn't get her to talk about it. But it had to be something big, as Chloe wasn't disturbed easily. In fact, Asuka could only recall three instances when she had been visibly upset. The first was when Mireille had brought up her parent's murder (And Asuka had yet to learn who it was that was responsible). The second was shortly after the 14th Angel attacked. Her cousin had been one of the few people to make it out of the flattened shelter before it collapsed and not get slaughtered by the Angel afterwords, causing her and most everyone else in that group to suffer from survivor's guilt. Asuka had made sure that Chloe learned about the support groups that had formed to help them get over that rather gruesome event, and her problems in that area went away (Asuka later wished that she had arranged for Kensuke to be dragged to one of those meetings. It might have shut him up about how 'glorious' the fight was). And the third was the argument with Kirika that had driven Chloe to the brink of suicide. What was bothering her this time? It was almost as if she was _expecting_ something bad to happen in the near future.

The one thing that Asuka knew it had nothing to do with was the complicated relationship between Chloe and Kirika. The Fourth's hostility towards Chloe had eased into an uneasy ceasefire after Asuka had hit her over the head with the fact that Chloe liked her. Things had slowly started to improve after Shinji had emerged from EVA-01. Especially since Shinji had gotten the idea of taking his sister and Chloe on a not-exactly movie date.

Asuka couldn't help but chuckle to herself as she considered the peculiar almost love triangle forming between those three. Normally when siblings ended up in something like that, the sibs tended to be the same gender. The fact that neither sibling really knew what their feelings for Chloe were made it even more amusing. So when Chloe arrived to meet the Ikaris before going to the theater (She had yet to tell them her new address), Asuka just had to ask:

"Tell me cousin. Which one is your date, and which one is your chaperon?"

All three of them flushed at the implications of that question. None of them were able to come up with an answer.

* * *

Three teenagers walked out of the movie theater.

"So, what did you think of it?" Shinji asked.

"It was absurd," Kirika said. "The hero kept using fancy tricks for no reason but the fact that they looked flashy when something simple would have worked better, then went on to charge headlong at an opponent when some subtlety was called for. And this was supposed to be a legendary fighter?"

Shinji blinked. The film had been a run-of-the-mill action flick. He could understand her commenting on the fact that the plot was purely just the minimum needed to explain how the hero had managed to get from one fight to the next, but his sister wasn't objecting to that. She was critiquing the fight scene choreography, in a highly professional manner.

Chloe agreed with Kirika on virtually every point. They spent a sizable part of the walk back to Chloe's new home all the reasons why either one of them could have killed the hero in ten seconds or less. As they crossed a small park, Shinji tried to protest that they were being a little harsh.

"Oh, really?" Kirika said. "Chloe, come at me using the technique he used to finish the last fight."

The series of moves that Shinji had seen had looked very impressive when shown in slow motion on film. When it was replayed before his eyes, Chloe swiftly ended up in a rather uncomfortable looking armlock.

"See?" Kirika asked, letting Chloe go. "Kick like that and you'll be off balance for your next move. Any trained fighter learns the importance of balance well before they are allowed to spar an actual person. What he should have done was something like this."

With that, Kirika went on the attack. Shinji noted that her feet returned to a point much closer to her center of mass after a kick than Chloe's did. Despite Kirika's not repeating the mistake from the movie, her next move did not end the fight. Chloe ducked under the punch and went for a leg sweep, which Kirika jumped over. The two stared at each other a moment, then the battle was rejoined.

The Section 2 escort noticed the commotion, but Shinji waved them off. He knew from Chloe's first day in Tokyo-3 that the two girls had been having matches like this for years, and there was no need for guards to get involved. He also wasn't sure that they could break them up without getting injured. Section 2 had improved their skills a great deal since the death of their previous commander, but not _that_ much.

Shinji had known his sister was good from what he had seen in her training sessions with Asuka, but watching this match, he was forced to realize that his sister had been holding back. If Asuka had tried to join in that fight, she'd have been taken down in fifteen seconds. Shinji estimated he'd last five seconds in that situation, if he was lucky.

The match lasted five minutes, and ended with Kirika knocked onto her back with Chloe's hand frozen half a centimeter from her throat. As Chloe pulled Kirika back to her feet, an explosion ripped through the air. Section 2 grabbed all three children and started leading them to the nearest GeoFront entry. Once safely underground, they were told to wait until the authorities figured out what had caused the blast. An hour later, a report came in that an apartment building near the park had been destroyed, with arson being the cause.

"What was the address of the building?" Chloe asked.

"1517 Mokuzai." The agent said.

"That's where I live. If we hadn't been delayed by that sparring session, we might have been in that building when it exploded."

The agent ran off to report that the arson might have been an attempt to murder two of the Children. After he left, Kirika turned to Chloe and mouthed the word 'Soldat'. Chloe nodded.

* * *

Chloe finished picking the lock of the apartment door and slowly opened it. Identifying the bomber who had blown up her apartment had turned out to be easier than she thought. One discussion with Bouquet after the bombing had led to her giving the older woman the names of every Soldat left in Tokyo-3. Mireille had quickly identified the only person on the list with any knowledge of explosives, and some simple data queries located his home address. And so, one night after he had tried to kill her, Chloe was going to explain to Minoru Sasaki exactly why the most important thing about trying to kill a professional killer was to get it right the first time.

She slowly crept through the home, silently seeking out her target, her eyes constantly sweeping for any possible threat. There weren't any. As Chloe entered the bedroom, she though that this had been one of the easiest jobs she'd ever done. Then she saw something that made her pause. Sasaki was not alone. The information she had on him had not mentioned that he was married.

Had Chloe been the girl that she had admired for ten years, the answer to this problem would have been simple: Kill the woman, and anyone else in the household, so that there could be no witnesses. A number of other people in her profession would have done the same, quite possibly including Altena.

But Chloe had never killed anyone simply for the sake of convenience. She had killed people on orders. She had killed those that had interfered with her assignments. She had killed those who had challenged her on purpose. But she had never killed anyone simply because they were in the area when she was working. She had never killed just because there was a connection between them and her actual target. And as she looked at the woman sleeping on the futon before her, Chloe realized that she didn't really want to cross that line.

No, she would not kill the wife. But she would use her to send a message. Chloe didn't really like the thought of Mireille's idea of forcibly revealing the existence of Les Soldats to the world, especially as villains, but the organization she had been raised to serve had been dying when she was recruited, and had died with Altena. And she would use any method she had to in order to destroy the abomination that had replaced it.

It took some effort, but Chloe figured out where Sasaki had stashed the demolitions gear that he had not used in the bombing. Then she killed the man, taking care to ensure that he didn't make any noise as he died. In the morning, his wife would wake up to discover a corpse in her bed, the evidence of his crime carefully stacked on his wardrobe, and a note written in deliberately crude block letters on the dead man's own stationery lying on the pile that read.

_Soldats –_

_If you want a war, then you've got one._

_Kill the uninvolved again, and I might be tempted_

_to sink to your level._

* * *

To call the skills of Section 2's investigative branch unimpressive would be an understatement. But even they couldn't fail to notice a lead when the perpetrator went out of her way to point it out to them. Once all the pieces had been deliberately laid out for them to find in advance, they were able to put the puzzle together.

There had only been one recent crime involving explosives and dead bystanders. A quick examination proved that the explosives found were from the same batch as those used in that bombing, and that the deceased had handled them at some point before the bombing. The investigation into what was assumed to be a failed attempt to kill the Third and Fourth Children was quietly closed. That left the question of who the 'Soldats' group was that was mentioned on the note remaining. Queries into that were sent to intelligence agencies across the world.

The only agency that knew (or was willing to admit to knowing, at least) was the JDA. The team tasked with investigating the organization met to decide what parts of what they knew to pass on. They came to the conclusion that if the home of a Soldat enforcer exploded one day, and the person responsible was apparently killed by that same enforcer the next, then the organization was suffering from some fairly serious internal problems. They decided to provide NERV with copies of the documents that they had received from Mireille Bouquet, leaving out the identification of Chloe as a Soldat operative who was almost certainly connected to the deaths of a dozen Section 2 agents. Leaving that girl alone allowed her to inflict more damage on her rivals in the organization, and spared the lives of anyone unlucky enough to be assigned to bring her in.

Ironically, the person that Section 2 called upon to confirm the JDA's translation of the documents was the person who had provided the JDA with their copies of the documents in the first place. Given the fact that the investigators didn't know this, their decision was quite sensible. Mireille was the only person in Section 2 who was fluent in both French and Italian. The Langumal manuscript passages were dismissed as being incomprehensible without an explanation of who the hermit and the sinner were, among other things. The document from Sicily was much more interesting.

"So this document is stating that this Soldat group authorized the formation of the Italian Mafia?" The investigator asked.

"One family in it, at least. Without other documents like this one, you couldn't prove that they'd had a hand in the creation of any of the families other than the Greones." Mireille answered.

"But if all these documents are copies of things written centuries ago, is there any real evidence that they're still around?"

"Oh, they're out there. I know it."

"What makes you so sure of that?"

"My parents were killed by Soldat agents. One of their people admitted that to me during an early attempt to kill Kirika back in Paris."

That set off alarms in the investigator's mind. This group had made _multiple_ attempts to kill one of the Children _before_ the Marduk Institute had conclusively identified her as a candidate?

"When did these attacks start?"

"You'd have to ask Kirika. The first attack took place before I met her. They stopped right before we were approached by NERV, mainly because in the last attack, Kirika ended up taking out the leader responsible for ordering those attacks."

The investigator thanked Mireille and left without asking any further questions. Mireille was glad of that, as if he'd pushed further he'd have gotten into details of her feud with Les Soldats that she didn't want to answer.

* * *

The leaders of SEELE were considering the implications of the latest attempt on the lives of the children.

"So, Les Soldats has begun to actively interfere with Instrumentality." Keel began.

"They were irritating enough when they were simply trying to wrest power from the Committee for their own ends. What blows they managed to strike then were never more than inconveniences. This time they nearly destroyed an irreplaceable component of our plans. In fact, the report indicates that they had been trying to do so from roughly the same time that we first considered even using one of the Children as part of the project." SEELE 03 agreed.

"Something must be done about this." SEELE 06 concurred.

"We cannot strike them directly. Every lead we have followed in our attempts to identify them has ended with the source of the lead being terminated. Without knowledge of who to act against, we cannot counter them." SEELE 02 pointed out.

"But there is the matter of the individual who has apparently declared war upon them. Perhaps this person can be recruited for our purposes. The Fourth Child's guardian also has a private vendetta against them." SEELE 05 suggested.

"We know no more about that individual than we do about the leaders of Les Soldats. We cannot recruit anyone we cannot find." SEELE 04 stated flatly. "We should arrange for the Fourth's guardian to be more fully debriefed on this subject, however. In addition, we can use the connection between Les Soldats and the bombing as a way to weaken their hold on those parties that they have managed to influence. Seeking to harm the Children is to betray all of humanity, after all."

"Agreed," Keel said. "See to it that the existence of Les Soldats and their known crimes is leaked and arrange for this Mireille Bouquet to be questioned on what she knows of this organization. Actions in regards to the individual who killed the Soldat responsible for the bombing will have to wait until we know who were are acting against."

With that, the monolith representing SEELE 01 vanished.

* * *

After the destruction of her previous residence, Chloe had moved into the same building as her cousin. The apartment that had originally been rented for Ayanami had been vacant since she had moved into the GeoFront during her convalescence from her injuries in the 13th Angel attack and never moved out again. Chloe's choice wasn't due to the proximity to her cousin, or the other Saplings, at least not directly. The important thing was that since all of the active duty pilots lived there, the place was swept for bombs regularly. She had moved from a Soldat provided residence to a new home with no Soldat connections that had been selected randomly, and Sasaki had been able to track her to the new address and launch an attack in only two days. Living in a guarded building was a comfort, especially as she knew there were no Soldats in Section 2 and that their competence in that area had improved considerably since her run-in with them outside Ayanami's.

The bombing turned out to be the topic of choice among the students. Major crimes were rare in Tokyo-3, and tended to attract notice. That was actually part of the reason she hadn't signed the note she'd left at Sasaki's. If that fool Aida had learned that Noir had passed through the area, he'd never shut up about it. The other part of the reason was that any Soldat who learned about the note would know exactly who had done it whether she signed the note or not.

One person was not joining in the discussions. One boy looked absolutely miserable, and flinched whenever any comments about how horrible a person the responsible parties to the bombing were. Chloe didn't know why this boy… Oh.

The boy's name was Naoki Sasaki. Who, judging by the resemblance, was the son of the very recently deceased Minoru Sasaki. And who had recently had his life derailed by waking up to learn that his father had been murdered in his bed, and that the killer had left behind proof that his father had murdered the 317 people who had been in the destroyed apartment building. A boy who had learned that the only reason the killer hadn't killed him afterwords was because she had refused to sink to his level. Even if his father's crimes had yet to become public knowledge, he knew about them, and would never be able to think of his father again without remembering those crimes, and he would likely never know why they had been committed.

Chloe was looking at the 318th innocent casualty of her private war with the Soldats leadership. This one was entirely her own fault.

* * *

"It's strange, isn't it," Chloe commented as she sat on the roof.

"What is?" Kirika responded.

"How rarely we ever see the consequences of what we do. We get a job, travel to the target, kill him, and then leave. Once we're gone, the people affected by the deaths we cause might was well not exist for all that they matter to us. Before today, the closest I've ever come to seeing how the family of a target felt about my kill was the reaction of bodyguards on my way out of the building."

"You're right. I almost never even think about it unless it actually happens. When I killed Nazarov, I knew that all the homeless people he was helping would suffer as a result, but even then, the only thing I really worried about was whether or not anyone would take care of his cat.

"Two of the other cases I'd ever experienced personally ended up being typical things from our line of work. Someone close to the target objected to what we had done and tried to get revenge. When they attacked us, we killed them too. I'm sure you've had to deal with a few of those on occasion yourself."

Chloe nodded. Relatives and/or loyal subordinates of targets seeking revenge had made leaving the area after a successful job more complicated than it should have been on more than one occasion for her. She'd dealt with them the same way that Kirika had. As far as she was concerned, it was just another variant of the basic 'threat, therefore eliminate' scenario that came with virtually every mission.

"And the remaining cases?" Chloe asked.

"One was in a small country called Ulgia. We were going after the leaders of a 'security consulting firm' that specialized in helping their clients prepare to launch coup attempts. The job itself wasn't too hard; for security consultants they certainly did a poor job of securing their own offices. But when walking through a market on my way out of town after the job was done, I ran into the daughter of one of the targets, who had flown in the day before in an attempt to reconcile with her father after some argument. Helping the girl pick up the groceries she'd dropped, knowing that entire time that I had just permanently destroyed any hope that the girl might make up with her father, without betraying the slightest suggestion of that, was a lot harder than shooting her father had been.

As to the final case, I think you know exactly what that one was about. I'm still not sure why Mireille was willing to forgive me."

Chloe flinched. Her plan to remove Mireille from the Trials had been straightforward in theory. But remembering Naoki's face, she was forced to realize that her scheme, whether she remembered actually implementing it or not, had hurt her partner almost as badly as it did her rival.

Chloe finally understood exactly why Kirika had been so cold to her when she had first arrived in Tokyo-3.

* * *

Kaworu Nagisa stepped off the plane and into the airport. His search for his father in France had turned out to be a complete failure, and so he had decided to turn to his remaining leads: The fact that every one of his siblings so far had been drawn to Tokyo-3, and the unknown killer who could wield the light of his soul.

He passed through customs easily. His patrons in SEELE had sufficient connections to give him an identity that would take a very in-depth examination in order for the Lilim to realize that it was false. And even if they could tell that his papers were forged, there was no way that they could be used to prove the Kaworu Nagisa, 14 year old Lilim, was actually Tabris, Messenger of Free Will.

As he took the train from the airport in Tokyo-2 into Tokyo-3, Kaworu began to realize why his kin were so fascinated with the city. He could feel the soul's light radiating from the fortress city. Residing somewhere within was someone, possibly several someones, whose souls shone as brightly as the Messengers. Deep beneath the earth, he could sense even more of that power. It was quite possible that some of that power, from one of those sources, was the light of the soul of Adam, calling out to his children.

If so, he, Tabris, youngest son of the First Messenger, would do whatever it took to find him.

* * *

A/N: And so Kaworu shows up in Tokyo-3 two Angels early. My thanks in advance to CJN for the idea of what he'll be spending his time doing.

I know that Ritsuko had figured out that Kirika had been attacked numerous times when she first arrived. Section 2 either didn't get that memo or didn't pay attention to it. They're not exactly the smartest people in NERV.


	23. Memories

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 23

Memories

Kaworu walked out of the principal's office with his new class schedule under his arm. Since he appeared to be a normal 14 year old Lilim to the Lilim, he had decided to attend a local school so as to appear normal until the time came to reveal himself. He had chosen this school because he could feel that two people in this part of the city had souls that shone far brighter than any Lilim's had a right to.

Kaworu had been placed in a class that had apparently been hemorrhaging students for months. Between those that had fled from his siblings, those that had been killed by his siblings, and those that had left for other reasons, that one class kept shrinking. The other classes in the school were shrinking as well, but not at the same rate. Some of the staff was apparently wondering if being in that class was bad luck, though from the looks the secretaries given when they realized he could hear them, they had (up until then) been keeping said rumors fairly quiet.

As he ascended the stairs to reach the floor his class was in, Kaworu noticed that the two souls he had noticed were close. Very close. In fact, they seemed to be getting closer as he approached the classroom. As he entered the class, he found that not only were they nearby, they were in the room with him.

One of the two that caught his eye was a girl in a wheelchair. From the unnatural coloring of her eyes and hair, Kaworu had to wonder if she was one of those strange Lilim who deliberately altered their natural coloration to stand out. And to the eyes of a Messenger, she did stand out, though not because of her appearance.

But the other girl, she was the one who truly caught his eye. There was something in the way her soul shined that called to him, beckoning him to go to her. Kaworu couldn't place what made her soul different from the bluette's, but whatever it was, it truly fascinated him.

He would have to learn more about her.

* * *

It had been awhile since the class had had a truly new student. As far as Chloe could remember, the last one had been her. Every other addition to the class since had been one of the pilots returning to the class after a long session in the hospital or people getting shunted into the class as the school reorganized the class roster to make up for the fact that the school was leaking students like a sieve as their families found reasons to live elsewhere. The fact that the city had a kaiju surplus, when every other city in Japan had a shortage, was usually at the top of the list of reasons provided. It was hard for most of the people in class to think of a non-NERV related reason why people would want to move to Tokyo-3.

Chloe was on edge the moment she laid eyes on Nagisa. There was something about him that just didn't seem right. Strange. She hadn't felt like this except… when something with an AT Field was around. The sensation wasn't nearly as strong as what she had felt during the last Angel attack, but it was there, and it was coming straight from Nagisa.

Chloe could only think of two reasons why the boy could have an AT Field. He was either connected to the mystery of the AT Fields of Ayanami and herself, or he was connected to the Angels. The former case meant that he was connected to Les Soldats, who were now her enemies. The latter case meant that he was connected to the Angels, who were everybody's enemies, and always had been.

Either way, it meant that Kaworu Nagisa was not someone she wanted to have around.

* * *

At the end of the day, Chloe found a piece of paper in her locker that she hadn't put there. Chloe unfolded the sheet and read the decidedly unusual message.

_Do you want to become one with me?_

_To be of one mind and body?_

_It is a very, very comfortable feeling._

"That," Asuka declared as she read over her shoulder, "Is the single most disturbing love letter I have ever seen."

Chloe wasn't sure about the note being a love letter, but she couldn't dispute the disturbing part. The disturbing part became even more disturbing when she realized that she was being followed on her way home. She quietly informed her cousin and the rest of the group that they were being tailed, and then quietly broke off from the group to watch from an alleyway. The tail might be a coincidence, but then again it could be someone looking for either EVA pilots or renegade Soldat enforcers. As the tail got closer to her position, she felt a semi-familiar sensation, and knew exactly who it was. To her surprise, Nagisa stopped following the group of pilots and turned into the alley she was in. Chloe exited the alley from the other end and continued walking.

For the next hour, Chloe wandered the streets of Tokyo-3 in a wandering semi-random route that no sane person would choose if they were trying to travel between any two given points in the city. The transfer student remained on her tail the entire time. Since he couldn't possibly be heading to some point in the same general direction she was traveling, there was only one conclusion to make: She had picked up a stalker.

A very talented stalker, as it turned out. No matter what she tried to do to shake him off, he would turn up again sooner or later. From her AT sense, she could tell if he was within twenty meters of her without even looking around. He seemed to be able to find her from an even greater distance just as easily. Eventually she managed to get him stuck in a crowd just as she got into a subway car just before it left the station. That allowed her to get enough distance between them that he couldn't make it up in a short period of time.

But even though she had shaken him for the moment, she knew it wouldn't last. He knew where she would be in the morning, and so he could follow her again if he wanted to. If he kept this up, she might be tempted to let him follow her to some nice quiet, secluded place where they wouldn't be disturbed by anyone so she could cut his throat and hide the body.

* * *

Kaworu's efforts to get to know the red-haired girl who had captured his attention had turned out to be unsuccessful. Chloe had found his message to be disturbing rather than intriguing. Every time he tried to seek her out after classes, she went out of her way to avoid him. The one time he had tried to approach her during school hours, she had brushed him off rather brusquely. He was still wondering about the retort he had gotten when he had suggested they had things in common.

 _There are only two other people like me._ _ **You**_ _aren't one of them_.

The girl apparently considered herself to be part of a very select group, and considered the possibility that he might be part of it to be highly offensive. He didn't have the slightest idea as to what that group might be.

No matter what he tried, it seemed that Chloe simply didn't like him. His attempts to find Adam within the fortress city were also fruitless, but he knew that he had yet to search everywhere.

Far off in the distance, another soul lighted up. Tabris smiled as he recognized his sister Arael as she began to make her search for their father.

* * *

Misato strode onto the bridge.

"OK, what do we know?" She demanded.

"An AT Field was detected in low orbit five minutes ago. The MAGI have confirmed Pattern Blue. We're retasking nearby satellites so that we can get a look at it now." Maya reported. As she did, an image appeared on the main monitor, showing the 15th Angel floating above the planet like an enormous snowflake drifting through the cosmos.

"What's it doing?"

"So far, nothing. It's just sitting there."

Misato looked at the readings that had been gathered on the Angel. The Angel wasn't coming to them, and the range it was at, most of the weapons they had available wouldn't be able to hit it at all. One of their long range weapons might be able to hit it, but it would still take incredibly good aim. Fortunately, their long range specialist of the Children was an extremely good shot.

Misato turned from the bridge and went to brief the pilots.

* * *

"The Angel is currently in low orbit," Misato told the pilots. "Other than the positron rifle, we don't have anything in inventory that stands a chance of hitting it unless it chooses to close in on Tokyo-3.

"Kirika, you will take the positron rifle and attempt to snipe the Angel. You're the only one of the pilots who is likely to land a hit. With a little luck, its AT Field will be weak enough that your shot will penetrate at that range.

"Shinji, Asuka, you'll be in the hangers on standby. If our initial plan doesn't work, we'll need you to be ready. Hopefully, you two won't be needed this time."

The pilots didn't like the thought of luck being a primary part of a battle plan, but they'd all beaten the odds before. They also couldn't think of any way to attack something in orbit from the ground. They started filing out of the briefing room.

"Oh, and Shinji?" Misato called out. The boy stopped. "Ritsuko still hasn't finished checking over EVA-01 after what happened to it in the last battle. We're still not sure if it's safe to pilot it. Do NOT activate your Evangelion without orders."

Shinji looked decidedly unhappy about not being able to help his sister if she needed him. The two locked gazes for a minute, then Shinji turned his head away and nodded slightly.

* * *

EVA-00 reached the surface of the Tokyo-3. The giant war machine collected its weapon and started looking for a good firing position. Kirika had made many impressive shots in her career as a professional killer of men, this one, in her temporary career as killer of Angels, would be the hardest one she had ever attempted. Hitting a dagger at close to a hundred yards with a pistol had been a challenging feat, especially as most people had trouble shooting anything with a pistol at that range. But hitting _anything_ in orbit from the ground was taking marksmanship to a whole new level.

Breathing slowly to keep her arms – and the Evangelion's – steady, she aimed the rifle. After centering the shot, she then elevated the sights in an attempt to compensate for the fact that the shot would not be travelling in an approximately straight line at that range.

One shot lanced out from the rifle. The burst of energy flew into the sky, defying the pull of gravity as it rocketed upwards. But as it flew, gravity slowly won out over its incredible initial velocity. Its upward motion slowed and then came to a stop. Then it began its fall back towards the Earth. But its upward motion had stopped at an altitude slightly above the Angel's. As the shot fell back towards the Earth, its path intercepted that of the 15th Angel. As the two collided, the shot exploded in a massive burst of energy…

Which failed to penetrate the Angel's AT Field.

* * *

The crew manning the bridge was impressed that Kirika managed to make the shot. But the fledgling cheer that had started when the shot impacted ended a second later when it was clear that the shot had done no damage.

"Kirika, get out of there now! There's nothing more you can do right now." Misato ordered.

Kirika acknowledged the order, and then started back to the catapult. As she did, the Angel launched its counteroffensive. A beam of light shone down from the floating snowflake, focused on the form of EVA-00.

* * *

The girl didn't know where she was. She wandered aimlessly through the empty streets, looking for something, anything, that would tell her where she was. She walked for what seemed like hours before she found herself in a graveyard, in front of a blonde woman with blue eyes. The woman looked at her, and then turned away from her in disgust and walked away. The girl chased after her.

"Mireille, come back!" She called, not knowing how she knew the woman's name. But no matter how fast she ran, she could not catch up to the woman. Just when it looked like she was finally gaining ground, her foot caught on something and she tumbled to the ground in the middle of the street. As she got to her feet, she looked at the object she had tripped on and saw that it was a corpse.

The dead body was that of a man just shy of middle age. In one hand he held a sketchbook, which was just as thoroughly riddled with bullets as its owner. Looking in the sketchbook, the girl saw a familiar-looking painting of a park overlooking a river. The girl somehow understood that she knew this man, that he shouldn't have died – and that his death was entirely her fault.

"I'm sorry." She whispered.

A flicker of motion that the girl noticed in the corner of her eye caused her to jump back as a knife flashed through the spot she had just been. Springing to her feet, the girl saw a red-haired girl of about her age in a silver toga, attacking her wildly with a knife and screaming. The girl knew that this person was someone she did not want to have to hurt.

The girl dodged frantically as the attacks kept coming, no matter how much she pleaded the other girl to stop. Eventually she managed to get enough distance between them that she could break away and run. She didn't know where she was running to, only that it was somewhere else.

Her flight eventually lead her to a dead end with a mirror affixed to the wall. As the girl looked into the mirror she realized with horror that she had no idea who the person whose reflection she saw was.

She screamed.

* * *

The bridge crew watched in horror as the Angel tore into the Fourth Child's psyche. They hadn't anticipated that an Angel could attack someone's mind before, and that lack of foresight was costing them.

"Mental contamination increasing!" Maya reported.

"A-10 connections have been shut down, but it's not doing anything!" Hyuga called out.

"Unit 00 is rejecting eject command!" Makoto added.

Misato swore as their every effort to counter the attack proved futile. Then she cringed as a scream of sheer terror ripped through the GeoFront.

"Misato-san! Let me go out!" Shinji begged.

"Denied. I will not permit Unit 01 to be put at risk." Commander Ikari stated flatly, cutting off any response Misato might have made. Shinji snarled as his progenitor bluntly stated that he valued a piece of equipment more than his daughter, but he remained in position.

"Second Child, activate your Evangelion and head for the main cargo lift." The Commander ordered.

* * *

Between repair work from the last battle, the effort to get Shinji out of his Evangelion after the last battle, and all the tests that had been run on EVA-01 since the retrieval, the technicians had all been too busy to have the on-duty pilots undergo synchronization tests since the 14th Angel had attacked. That had meant that she had had more than a month to wonder about her Evangelion's part in her mother's fate and the odd statement that the Fourth had made about the fact that the Evangelion that had killed _her_ mother somehow recognized her.

Over the years she had been spent learning how to synchronize with EVA-02, Asuka had gotten into the habit of ignoring the sensation of something touching her mind as she activated the unit. After a while, she had stopped feeling the sensation. Whether it was because it had stopped happening or because she had gotten good enough at ignoring it that she didn't notice it all, she didn't know. At the time, it hadn't been important. But this time, she was intentionally looking for it. As EVA-02 powered up, Asuka felt the half-forgotten sensation touch her mind. This time, for the first time since she had started piloting, she focused her attention on the sensation instead of the machine.

As she did, a wave of comfort passed over her. She felt as if someone was holding her, looking after her, and that she was safe. A feeling that she hadn't felt since her mother had gone insane.

"Mama?" she whispered.

Asuka's thoughts were interrupted by the Commander's voice coming in through the com.

"Second Child. Make your way to the main cargo lift and take it to the lowest level." He ordered.

The elevator went downwards. And downwards. And downwards. Asuka hadn't known there were that many levels in Central Dogma. Finally the elevator stopped in front of a pair of enormous sealed doors. As the lift stopped, the doors slowly opened. Asuka gasped as she saw what was in the room.

The room contained a small lake of LCL. At the far end of the room, the maimed torso of an Angel was nailed to an enormous cross. The LCL in the lake came from the wounds of the Angel, both those caused by the nails and the one caused by the gigantic spear embedded in its side.

"Was die Hölle?" She wondered out loud.

"Retrieve the Lance, and then head for the surface." Commander Ikari dictated.

Asuka dutifully pulled the lance out of the Angel's side. As the last of the weapon, which looked like the world's largest fork when exposed, was removed, the wound in the Angel's side sealed itself, and its legs reformed.

Asuka didn't know what had caused that. She wasn't sure she wanted to know. It wasn't important at the moment. Right now she had a different Angel to kill.

* * *

The girl was trapped in an endless nightmare. She had no identity. All of her friends had either rejected her, turned against her, or were dead because of her. She was completely alone. She didn't even have herself to count on because she didn't know who she was. But even as she screamed in terror at what she saw in the visions that the Angel was forcing upon her, her tormentor decided that her anguish was insufficient and delved deeper into her mind. There was something in the girl's memories that had been carefully sealed away, and the Angel wanted to know what it was. The blocks hiding those memories away from the person who had lived them were no match for Arael's power, and the girl found herself reliving memories she hadn't known she had. Most of the images that flashed before the girl's eyes were indistinct, though the image of a boy kept appearing in them over and over. But two scenes were very clear.

In the first, she was next to the boy that she had seen in the vague memories. Facing both of them was a woman who smiled at them kindly and playfully ruffled their hair before leaving the room to enter a large metal tube. As the tube was inserted into an enormous machine that seemed strangely familiar, the image of the woman, floating in an oddly colored liquid, appeared on a screen on the far side of the room.

Everyone else in the room started calmly reporting things the girl didn't understand, but from their tone, things were going well. But after a while, something went wrong. The matter-of-fact statements started to be panicked shouts as everyone desperately tried to stop some unstated calamity. The woman in the tube didn't seem to notice that an emergency was going on until almost the last minute. She realized just in time to have a look of horror appear on her face before her flesh burst like a person-shaped balloon filled with the same liquid that was in the tube, leaving her empty outfit as a reminder that she had ever been there. The two children clung to each other and shook in fear as one man screamed "YUUUUUIIIIII!" in grief.

The scene faded, and the other began. The girl was in a bedroom, crying alone. The man who had been screaming in the previous memory came into the room, looking down coldly at the child.

"Tou-san, when is aniki coming back?" The girl sobbed.

The man ignored the question. "You're going on a trip, Kirika." He said, in the same tone of voice a man would use to inform a child that they needed to clean their room.

"Will aniki be where I'm going?" She asked, with a hint of hope.

The girl's father ignored that question as well. He stepped aside, allowing a woman with long brown hair to enter the room. As she did, a name came into the mind of the older self of the girl watching the memory: Altena.

Altena knelt down before the child, smiling kindly. "Don't worry, Kirika. These worries won't trouble you much longer, I promise."

As the seemingly gentle woman gained the trust of the small girl, the older version of the girl watched with horror. She knew that if she went with Altena, the things that bothered her at that moment in her life would not bother her any longer, but only because they would be completely forgotten, along with everything else that defined who she once was. She knew that to go with the priestess would be to sacrifice herself and become a completely different person. In desperation, she called out for help from the one person that she somehow knew had never given up on her.

" _ **ANIKIIIIIIIIIIIIIIIII** **!"**_

* * *

The moment Shinji heard his sister call out to him, he started to manually activate his Evangelion. He heard the Commander order him to stand down, but he ignored it. His sister needed him, and that was all that mattered.

The docking restraints were all still in place around EVA-01, but they didn't matter. They were designed to keep deactivated Evangelions from falling over, not to keep activated Evangelions from moving. The incident with Ayanami when she first attempted to pilot EVA-00 had conclusively proved that they couldn't immobilize an Evangelion that wanted to move for very long. This was especially true of the one Evangelion that no longer had a five minute power supply when cut off from the main power grid. Within a minute of EVA-01 activating, the restraints had all been forced open or broken apart. Shinji stomped to the nearest catapult and contacted the bridge.

"Are you going to send me up, or do I have to climb up myself?" He snarled. A moment later, he was rocketing to the surface. Shinji ran towards his sister's position. Placing one arm under the shoulders of EVA-00, he half carried, half dragged her back towards the catapult.

The Angel attempted to launch its mental attack against Shinji, but it didn't work. The majority of Shinji's most traumatic experiences involved his sister somehow. With Shinji's mind locked on the fact that his sister needed him at that very moment, memories concerning her absence or amnesia couldn't find any purchase.

As EVA-00 and EVA-01 returned to the GeoFront, EVA-02 emerged on the surface. The 15th Angel was still focusing its efforts on the two fleeing Evangelions, and so it did not notice the appearance of a new foe. This turned out to be a fatal mistake as a javelin the size of an aircraft carrier was hurled from Tokyo-3, clearing the atmosphere and going completely through Arael before being caught in the gravitational field of the moon.

* * *

Using the Lance had been a risky strategy, but it had paid off. The Angel had been destroyed. However, because it had been used, it could not be used again. Given the capabilities of the various space exploration agencies, the only way anyone could hope to get the Lance back to Earth would be to send up a shuttle, push the Lance into a decaying orbit, and hope it didn't land on anything important or a particularly deep section of the ocean.

Gendo knew that the Committee would not be pleased by the loss of the Lance. Losing it reduced the number of ways in which their scenario could be implemented considerably. But the Commander didn't particularly care. _His_ scenario held no use for the Lance except as an anti-Angel weapon, and it had just fulfilled that role admirably. It was true that he could no longer use it for that purpose, but with only two more Angels to be destroyed before the final stage of his scenario commenced, there was a good chance that it would not be needed for either of them. Especially since with only two Angels remaining, he could afford to take casualties among his pilots that would have been potentially catastrophic earlier.

The battle had had another unexpected consequence. Gendo had known for weeks that the only tool he had available with which he could control his children was each other. By going against orders to save his sister, Shinji had given Gendo the opening he needed to utilize that tool. Spending a few weeks in solitary confinement in the brig, with no contact with his beloved sister, would make the boy desperate to make sure that such a separation would not happen again. Making it clear that the Third Child's imprisonment ultimately stemmed from _her_ failure would grant a degree of control over the Fourth Child, as well.

Collecting some men from Section 2 on his way, Gendo traveled from the bridge down to the EVA hangers. The Fourth Child had just been extracted from EVA-00, and was shaking in the arms of her brother, trying to get a hold of herself after the immense mental violation that she had just experienced. Just the kind of situation that would leave the two vulnerable to what he had in mind.

"Third Child," He said flatly. "You went against explicit orders when you activated your Evangelion. Your insubordination will not be tolerated." Gendo turned to the Section 2 men. "Take him to the brig."

Two of the men, who were each at least 40 centimeters taller and 20 kilograms heavier than either of the Children, approached the two siblings, who were too concerned with each other to actively acknowledge their estranged parent. As one of them grabbed the Third Child, Gendo's plans were disrupted yet again.

One moment, Shinji was being pulled away from his sister. The next, the man was screaming in pain as Kirika shattered his knee with one swift and brutally effective kick. The other man attempted to grab her arm. She let him, then pulled him off balance and knocked his legs out from under him. As he fell, she wrenched the man's arm in a complete circle, casually wrecking his shoulder in a series of sickening crunches.

As his daughter turned towards him, Gendo froze in shock. There was no sign of any of the emotional torment that she had been suffering on her face. There was no sign of any emotion at all. Kirika's expression was completely blank, and as Gendo looked upon it, he knew that he was looking upon the face of death.

"You will not separate us again, _Soldat_." She stated in a completely emotionless monotone, as she raised a pistol she had taken from one of the men she had just crippled.

Gendo broke out in a cold sweat at the last word. The Committee knew of Les Soldats, and considered them to be enemies. There was no way that the accusation that had just been given would not end up reaching their ears. Once they learned of it, they would have all the justification they needed to have him replaced, destroying his Scenario. Of course, that assumed that he lived out the next few minutes, which he probably wouldn't if his daughter had any say in the matter.

He turned and ran.

* * *

As the Commander made for the door, Kirika opened fire. The only reason she didn't manage to kill him was because the only Section 2 agent she hadn't crippled jumped into the line of fire, taking the shots meant for the fleeing man. Kirika calmly started after her target. Other members of the NERV command staff, who had followed after Gendo, stood to block her path.

"Get out of my way." She ordered.

"Kirika, you need to let go of the gun and calm down. I'm sure you don't really want to hurt your father…" Fuyutsuki began. It appeared to him that the girl's experience with the Angel had pushed the girl over the edge. And given her incredible skill at combat, they didn't really have a way to subdue her if she didn't want to be subdued.

"He stopped being my father the day he sold me to Altena." She snapped.

Everyone within earshot winced. The Fourth Child's amnesia had been common knowledge for some time. The Angel's mind rape had apparently caused her to remember her past. And what she had remembered was apparently not very pleasant, if it caused her to want to kill her father on sight.

"Sold you? What could he have sold you for?"

"An office the size of the school gym, for starters."

 _That_ got Fuyutsuki's attention. If Gendo really was a Soldat, and had sold out his child in order to get control of NERV, that would imply that the organization had managed to penetrate either the UN Security Council or SEELE.

Fuyutsuki snapped out of his musing when he noticed that the Fourth Child was getting closer to him.

"Are you going to move, or do I have to move you?"

Fuyutsuki braced himself for the brutal beating he knew was coming, when a pair of arms wrapped around Kirika's waist.

"Imouto, please stop." Shinji begged. "I don't want my sister to be a murderer."

The blank expression on the Fourth Child's face faded away, to be replaced with one of sorrow.

"It's too late for that, aniki." She said sadly as she lowered the gun. "It's ten years too late."

* * *

With the Fourth Child apparently subdued, Kozo had to figure out what to do with the girl. She had attempted to kill her commanding officer, and in the process had injured three people. The man who had been shot wasn't too badly hurt – Section 2 agents had started wearing bulletproof vests during their procedural overhaul after the death of their previous commander – but the other two would need considerable amounts of reconstructive surgery and months of recovery time before they would be fit for duty again. That was something that justified locking her up, but the problem was whether or not she would allow herself to be locked up.

Normally, that wouldn't be a problem, but it was quite clear that any attempt to force Kirika (or her brother) to go somewhere she didn't want to go would end very badly for the person who made the attempt. Shinji could keep her in check, but only because she _would_ not attack him, not because she couldn't take him down if something made her change her mind on that issue. The girl had openly admitted that she had committed murder when she was no more than four or five. There was no reason she couldn't do it again if she felt like it.

For the interim, Kozo decided to have the girl placed under house arrest at her apartment, with her brother in place to make sure she stayed there. That would keep the now lethally volatile girl contained in a place that she would want to stay contained while he dealt with the other potential issue: The possibility that Gendo was working for an organization that was working to kill the pilots.

Commander Ikari had disappeared after he had been attacked by the Fourth Child. The First Child had vanished with him. The fact that he had fled the GeoFront after the attack instead of seeking additional security agents to protect him implied that he had something to hide concerning the group known as Les Soldats.

Kozo had no choice but to order Gendo's office and quarters searched by a team including the only person in NERV other than the Fourth Child with any proven knowledge of Les Soldats. An hour into the search of the Commander's quarters, Mireille left the search to show him and Captain Hatanaka a very old leather bound volume.

"This is a copy of the Langumal Manuscript, a very old Soldat document. They go to extreme lengths to make sure that outsiders don't get a hold of a copy of this." She reported.

"What proof do you have that this book is connected to Les Soldats?" Kozo asked.

To answer, Mireille opened the book. Kozo couldn't read the archaic French, but he could pick out the term 'Les Soldats' appearing at least once on every page that the woman turned to.

"In addition, take a look at this." The woman turned the book to a page she had marked earlier, and framed her hand around a specific passage, which read:

_Aux profondeurs des feux de l'enfer,_

_Leurs âmes noires leurrent les enfants perdus._

"That looks familiar." Hatanaka said.

"That's because that is the exact phrase that was written on the note left behind in the First Child's apartment on the night your predecessor was killed."

Kozo looked down at the evidence that proved that Gendo Ikari was connected to at least one attempt on the lives of the pilots under his command. The Committee was not going to like this.

* * *

Fuyutsuki was right: The Committee did not like the news at all. The fact that he had sold his daughter to a criminal organization in exchange for their backing in his gaining control of NERV wasn't really the issue. When you got down to it, every single member of the Human Instrumentality Committee was willing to sell off their children to achieve their ultimate goal, and everyone else's children while they were at it.

The issue was that Gendo hadn't told them that he had done this. They had long thought that they had maneuvered the Soldat influenced members of the UN Security Council to accept a man they controlled, but now it appeared that they might have been tricked by Les Soldats into thinking that a Soldat was one of _their_ agents.

To make things worse, they didn't know when Gendo had been compromised. They could tell from the approximate date of the Fourth Child's disappearance that he had been a double agent for at least a decade, but beyond that, they couldn't tell. Given that a young Gendo Rokubungi had gone out of his way to make sure that he met Kozo Fuyutsuki, and though him a junior SEELE member named Yui Ikari, it was entirely possible that he had always been a Soldat and that they had missed it.

There was no way this could be covered up. They had already made a few careful leaks about the criminal organization that was seeking to destroy humanity by hunting the Children. After that rather public accusation, the knowledge that the Commander of NERV, the father of two of the pilots, was provably a member of that organization was simply something too juicy to conceal.

They would have to perform a careful scrutiny of every single action that Gendo had made as Commander of NERV, and possibly of every action he had taken as Director of GEHIRN as well. They would need to do a careful sweep of NERV to find out how many Soldats he had planted in an organization they were supposed to control. They would need to find a replacement for the fleeing traitor, one they could control or at the very least influence. And on top of that, they would have to keep track of every intelligence agency in the world backtracking every record of Gendo's they could get a hold of in their efforts to track down Les Soldats from them, and make sure the trail did not lead to them. After all, it was known that some of Gendo's patrons in the UN were Soldat controlled, and the investigators might start investigating the SEELE controlled patrons by mistake.

Still, there was one possible advantage to be seen from this. They had just found a second inside source on information about Les Soldats, who had just as little reason to love the organization as her guardian did. Since the Fourth Child would have to be carefully questioned before she could be released from house arrest, they had the perfect opportunity to pump her for all the information they needed.

* * *

Shinji had had a very mixed day. On the positive side, and it was a very major positive, Kirika had appeared to have regained enough of her memories that she thought of him as her brother again. On the other side of the equation, he couldn't even begin to imagine what she had suffered at the Angel's hands. Her recovered memories were the byproduct of some form of unexplained torture method.

Then there was what she had said and done. The Commander had _sold_ her to a crime syndicate? For their help in gaining control of NERV? Just when Shinji thought that his opinion of Gendo Ikari couldn't get lower, the man found a way to surprise him. And on top of that, Kirika had openly admitted that she had killed someone in cold blood shortly after being sold off. Why? Was it something the criminals had forced her to do? Or was it something that she had done in order to escape? What _had_ they done to her? Since he was supposed to be watching his sister to make sure she didn't leave the apartment complex, he had the opportunity to ask her.

Kirika wasn't surprised to see him.

"I suppose you want to know exactly what happened ten years ago, aniki." She said. "If you really want to know, I'll tell you, but you won't like it. I can promise you that."

Shinji nodded his understanding, but he didn't leave. He needed to know what had happened to her if he wanted to be able to help her. His sister sighed, and then began to tell him what she had been doing during their ten year separation.

* * *

A/N: That question from when Shinji was absorbed by EVA-01 does sound sort of like a declaration of intent from a stalker, doesn't it? My thanks to CJN for the idea of how Kaworu would react to Chloe.

Kaworu knows that Chloe has an unusual AT Field, but he doesn't know that she has Adam. She almost never uses her AT Field, and unless she does so, the only way for him to tell whether or not she has Adam involved getting much further into her personal space than she has any intention of letting him. On the other hand, Chloe can't sense his AT Field at a distance when he isn't using it.


	24. Confessions

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir.

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 24

Confessions

"What do you know of Noir?" Kirika asked.

Shinji blinked at the non sequiter. What did Noir have to do with her being sold to a crime ring?

"He's a vigilante. He travels the world, seeking out criminals that the law cannot or will not stop and killing them. Why?" He answered.

"So all you know about Noir are those highly flattering stories that Kensuke tells. While those tales are entertaining, they have almost nothing to do with the truth. Noir is not a vigilante. Noir's targets are not always those who are a threat to society. And Noir is most definitely not a he."

"How do you know that?"

"Because I am Noir."

* * *

Having one pilot missing school was a semi-common occurrence, especially in the days immediately following an Angel attack. As a result of this, the school took the absence of three of the pilots to be the result of the last attack. Asuka's classmates found it alarming that she was the only one who was apparently uninjured after the battle, but their plausible conclusion relieved Asuka of the need to either explain what had really happened or come up with a believable lie.

It was just as well. Rei had deserted, Kirika had attempted to kill the Commander, and Shinji had been corralled into guard duty because he was the only person other than Kirika's guardian that the Fourth Child wasn't likely to kill out of hand if she wanted to leave and the guard tried to stop her.

Asuka had seen the footage of Kirika's attack on the Commander, and it had honestly frightened her. She had seen the Fourth Child kill before. She faced her in training matches. She had even seen her face off against Chloe in that brutal kendo match. But those incidents were nothing compared to that attack. It wasn't the way she had casually destroyed two Section 2 agents in three moves. It was the complete lack of emotion on her face as she did it. From the moment that the agents tried to separate Kirika from her brother to the moment Shinji intervened, there was not a single trace of humanity in her body, only lethal focus. Asuka remembered that one of the things that her cousin had always admired about the Fourth Child was her focus. If Chloe found _that_ to be attractive, then there was something wrong with her…

Asuka's thoughts froze as she came to a sudden realization. Chloe and Kirika had grown up together for ten years, living in the same home and studying under the same teacher. And Kirika had flatly stated that she had been sold to an international crime ring by her father. That would imply that Chloe was connected to the same organization.

Asuka needed to get some answers from her cousin, and soon.

* * *

Shinji had been hearing stories about Noir from Kensuke for months. He hadn't expected Noir to show up in person to tell him they were wrong. He certainly wasn't expecting Noir to be his little sister. He wondered how Kensuke would have react if he knew that he had been eating lunch with Noir on a regular basis.

"Noir, it is the name of an ancient fate. Two maidens that govern death. The peace of the newly-born, their black hands protect." Kirika recited.

"Forget everything that Kensuke told you about Noir. To be Noir is to be a killer. There is nothing heroic or dramatic about that line of work if we can help it – my 'climatic battle' against Balsan consisted of me sneaking into his bedroom and shooting him in his sleep.

"I'm not a hero, aniki. I'm an assassin. A killer for hire. And I have been since the day Altena sent me to murder Mireille's family."

Shinji's thoughts flashed back to the memory of Kirika's that he had seen when he had been absorbed by EVA-01. He hadn't just witnessed a murder, he had witnessed the murder through the eyes of the killer. A murder in which the final act of the woman about to die was to entrust the safety of her soon to be orphaned daughter to her killer.

"Why did she…?" He began.

"Ask me to look after Mirielle?" Kirika finished, "I don't know. I didn't even understand what she was saying at the time – my French wasn't very good back then. And I wouldn't even meet Mireille until years later. The only explanation I can think of is that she knew what I was, just like she knew why I was killing her, and from that, she knew that I would run into Mireille sooner or later."

"Why d-did…?"

"Ultimately, because Altena asked me to. I didn't know why she wanted the Bouquets dead, and to be honest, I didn't really care. I didn't learn the reason why until after I met Mireille.

"Mireille was one of the children that Altena had selected to be trained as a Sapling – a Noir candidate - just like Chloe and me. But unlike Chloe's parents and our father, Mireille's parents refused to turn her over. They knew that their actions would get them branded as traitors and executed, but they decided their daughter's safety was more important than their lives and did it anyway."

Shinji nodded understandingly. He wished that the Commander had shown the same courage when he had been ordered to give up Kirika. The thought that the reason he had been sent away was to make things simpler when the Commander sold Kirika to a criminal to turn into a killer only made the boy's opinion of the man he had once considered his father even lower.

"Chloe was also a Sapling?"

"Yes," Kirika nodded, laying her pocketwatch on the table. "The title of Noir is meant to be jointly held by two people. Because the training and testing can be deadly, Les Soldats always chooses more than two people to serve as candidates, and rewards the title to the two strongest. Chloe and I were trained by Altena, Mireille was trained by her uncle. I don't remember any other Saplings, but if there were any, they didn't survive the training.

"That is ultimately what caused the breach between me and Chloe. The title of Noir goes to the two strongest, and that is determined by seeing which two are still alive after all the training and testing is done. If more that two survive, we are expected to kill each other. Chloe wanted to be with me in the end, so she tried to use the fact that I killed Mireille's parents and brother to turn us against each other."

Shinji looked at the design on the cover of the watch, and was reminded of the cliff he saw in the visions during that highly surreal month in EVA-01. Kirika and one other kneeling in the exact position depicted in the watch, with the other person constantly switching between Chloe and Mireille – a representation of Noir, where Noir was his sister and one person yet to be determined. It also explained why Kirika and Mireille considered the revelation of who killed Mireille's parents to be an act that justified retaliation instead of repayment.

Shinji looked at his sister. From the way she was tensed, he knew that she was half expecting him to reject her after what she had confessed, and was bracing herself for the blow.

"Don't worry, imouto. That's all in the past now."

"The past?" Kirika shook her head, "No, aniki, it isn't in the past. Even though all three of us have since broken with Les Soldats, none of us have changed what we are. I didn't kill Balsan until after I went independent – Mireille and I were hired to kill him by a coalition of local communities who were tired of all the damage his private war inflicted whenever he passed through. Les Soldats had nothing to do with Nazarov's death either. That was a private hit that Mireille and I took on. He wasn't a threat to anyone, and wouldn't have lived much longer even if I hadn't taken the job, but I killed him anyway. Sometimes I wonder if anyone is taking care of his cat now that he's gone."

"Cat?" His sister had openly admitted to killing at least five people in cold blood, but she worried about a pet?

"I like cats. Unfortunately, when your job can have you travel halfway around the world on a few hours notice and stay away for weeks, you can't take proper care of a pet. I had a hard enough time keeping the plants alive. Besides, Myshkin had nothing to do with what got his master killed.

"The thing is, the three of us have been trained and conditioned to be killers all our lives. It's the only thing we've ever known. Even my job with NERV is just a change from killing people to killing Angels. What else can I do with my life when virtually every skill I have I learned so that I can get better at killing?"

Shinji put his arm around his sister's shoulders.

"I don't know," He admitted. "But I'm willing to help you find out."

* * *

From Chloe's perspective, the only thing going her way at the moment was that the last Angel hadn't gotten close enough to pick her out and come after her. She still didn't know why the Angels were after her. She was embroiled in a semi-secret war against her former allies, and didn't know what her next move should be. That Nagisa boy still wouldn't leave her alone. Her ex-partner and her brother had apparently been injured in the last battle. And on top of that, her cousin had been giving her funny looks all day.

She didn't learn the reason for those looks until after school got out for the day.

"So what did you and Kirika learn from Altena?" Asuka asked pointedly.

Chloe knew that she had not mentioned her teacher's name to anyone. She did her best to control her reaction, but Asuka had been watching for it.

"I thought so," Asuka said triumphantly. "Were you ever planning to tell me about your being with Les Soldats?"

If this conversation had taken place a month earlier, Chloe might have been forced to kill Asuka to keep her silent. As it was, she stood there in shock as her cousin told her that she had figured out her greatest secret.

"During the last battle, the Fourth Child regained her memories. The first thing she did after getting them back was to try to shoot the Commander. She said something about being sold to a woman named Altena on behalf of Les Soldats – the same organization that blew up your apartment and nearly killed half the pilots. Since you grew up with Kirika and trained under the same teacher, I can't help but wonder if you know anything about this."

Chloe parsed that statement. Then she focused on the single most unlikely part of it.

"She _missed?_ "

Asuka glared at her cousin. "Chloe, we have solid evidence connecting these people two attempts to kill the pilots. The attack at Wondergirl's old place right after you arrived, and the bombing of your place last week. Are you with them? Did you come here to kill us? To kill me?"

Chloe flinched from the accusation. "None of my orders had anything to do with you."

"Is that supposed to be comforting? If you had gotten orders to kill me, would you have done it?"

To her horror, Chloe realized that she didn't know the answer to the question. For most of her life, she had simply assumed that her superiors had good reasons for wanting her targets dead and didn't inquire as to what they were. It wasn't until she had learned of Breffort's treachery that the concept of her killing someone without justification even occurred to her. Given that the man who had issued the order to kill Ayanami had been a traitor, had that order even been legal?

Would she have killed her cousin if she'd been ordered to? She had actually thought about it at the beginning of the conversation. Had she gotten the orders without recognizing the target as her kin, almost certainly. She had apparently already managed to kill her own parents without realizing it until someone else told her about it months later. She could have duplicated that feat with a cousin easily.

"I think you owe me some explanations, cousin." Asuka stated. "When you're ready to come clean, you know where to find me."

With that, Asuka left, leaving Chloe even less certain of what she should do next than she had been that morning.

* * *

Three days after the attack of the 15th Angel, a group of investigators was sent to interview the Fourth Child. Ryoji Kaji was part of that team, acting on behalf of the JDA officially for once.

His membership of the team was somewhat ironic. The investigators that were working on behalf of NERV's official purpose had to suspect that he had been working for the JDA before he left NERV, but couldn't prove it. The investigators that were working for SEELE (no matter whoever their IDs claimed they were working for) knew he had been working against them for some time. But despite that, none of them could do anything to him. He had been the person who had made the initial break on the existence of Les Soldats, and his superiors in the JDA made sure that all the other investigators knew it. That made him the only intelligence officer in the world to have successfully made any kind of operational victory against them, which made him the single most qualified person in the world to lead the team trying to track them down, and there wasn't anything the various parties that didn't like him could say that would hold up against that logic in the eyes of the investigators who were honestly trying to track down an organization that apparently wanted to destroy the world.

As a result of that, Kaji now found himself in charge of a multinational team to track down Les Soldats. The first thing he did was to break up the team into subgroups. Those that he was fairly certain were connected to SEELE he tasked to translating the Langumal Manuscript and seeing to it that the translations were spread as widely as possible. Given that SEELE and Les Soldats were apparently rivals for power, having them ensure that one of their enemy's greatest secrets could not possibly be hidden anymore was something he felt he could safely trust them with. Most of the others he sent to go over every detail of Gendo Ikari's life and records that they could possibly get their hands on. And as they had ironclad evidence connecting him to an organization that was apparently attempting to do the exact opposite of his official job description, they had access to a great deal of those records. With a little luck, they'd expose some information on SEELE while they were at it. Kaji took the remaining members of the team to question the very people responsible for him learning of Les Soldats in the first place.

Since Kaji was acquainted with the Fourth Child and her guardian, he was able to establish the basic level of trust necessary to make a non-hostile questioning possible. As there was a very real possibility in this case that a hostile questioning could result in a dead questioner, that was a very important starting point. The initial questioning about Les Soldats only provided corroboration of what they already knew (Which, since it was coming from one of the sources of the original information, wasn't very surprising to Kaji). Then the NERV representative asked why she had claimed to have been sold to Les Soldats by Commander Ikari.

"There's an old tradition in Les Soldats that goes out of style and then gets revived periodically. They requisition the daughters of members of the organization and take them away to be raised by a member of the inner circle at their oldest base. These girls are then trained to become elite enforcers for the organization. I was one of those girls. Mireille was intended to be one of them as well, but her parents refused to give her up. My first assignment was to execute them for defying Altena's orders. I would have been about five at the time." Kirika said.

The flat statement took the questioners off guard. They had all known that the girl had killed somebody, but they hadn't expected her to provide details that readily. Or the nature of those details.

"D-Does your guardian know about this?" The questioner stammered.

Kirika nodded. "She knows. And if she ever decides that she wants to kill me for that, I will let her."

The interrogation team couldn't really say anything else about that. If the single most injured party from the crime was free to exact her own punishment for the crime whenever she chose and knew it, and yet refused to do so, what right did they have to impose one of their own?

"You said you've been to one of their main bases?" Kaji asked, changing the direction of the questioning.

"Yes. It's in a small valley on the French/Spanish border. It's probably abandoned now – Mireille and I hit it the day before we were approached by NERV, and they might not have wanted to repopulate it." Kirika then gave the coordinates of the facility.

The questioning continued for another hour before it was time for the team to start going over the information they had gotten. Before they left, Kaji had one last question.

"How determined will these people be to take you and the other pilots out?"

"Absolutely. In the eyes of Les Soldats, I am a renegade, and renegades are put to death without question. That has been the absolute law of the organization for a thousand years – be loyal or be killed. If they compromise on that, their power base could unravel.

"Of course, they trained me a bit too well. They only had one person good enough to stand a chance at taking me down directly, and she's gone renegade, too."

All eyes promptly returned to the Fourth Child.

"Who is that?" Kaji asked.

"The third girl who was chosen for Altena's enforcer project. She might be willing to talk with you. I can contact her easily enough."

* * *

Kaji had a fairly good idea who the other potential informant was, but he permitted Kirika to make the initial approach to the girl. After all, the person in question was apparently the Fourth Child's equal in combat skills, which made her far more dangerous than the entire investigation team combined. And if he was right as to who the girl was, he had already seen her operate, and knew first hand that she could take him down without any effort at all.

Kirika was asked to contact the other renegade Soldat almost immediately. That evening, Kaji was informed that the renegade in question was willing to cooperate in exchange for personal immunity from prosecution. That condition necessitated various members of the team contacting their respective governments for approval, but that approval was ultimately given. So now Kaji found himself sitting across a table from Chloe Langley, ex-Soldat assassin.

"Please state your name for the record." Kaji asked.

"Chloe Langley."

"Are you, or have you been in the employ of the organization known as Les Soldats?"

"Yes."

"Were you sent to Tokyo-3 under orders from that organization?"

"Yes."

"What were those orders?"

"To kill a NERV employee by the name of Rei Ayanami."

The questioners looked among themselves. They had just found the person who had killed the former head of Section 2 and tried to kill one of the pilots. They couldn't actually do anything about it, since the killer had been promised immunity. But they could trace the order to the person who gave it.

"Who gave you those orders?"

"A member of the inner circle named Remy Breffort."

The man from Section 2 pulled out his phone and started to dial a number, intent on getting the named person taken into custody.

"Don't bother. He's already dead." Chloe interrupted.

"What?"

"I found evidence that he had commissioned the assassination of his political rivals within the organization. I executed him for his crimes. Just as I intend to do to every other member of the circle he hadn't killed for helping him."

While most of the team was horrified by the flat manner in which the girl had confessed to hunting down and murdering her apparent superior, Kaji found the statement very interesting. He now knew an important part of Chloe's mindset: She had honestly believed in the cause she had been indoctrinated to serve, and took her duties as a part of that cause seriously. And she had been forced to realize that the cause she believed in had been perverted beyond all hope of redemption. Kaji privately doubted that her cause was as noble as she apparently believed it was – most causes usually weren't once you dug down below the propaganda. But she had thought it had been, and now believed it was her responsibility to avenge the death of the cause by destroying those she saw as responsible for corrupting it. And with that understanding, Kaji knew exactly how to guide the questioning to get all the information he needed out of her.

Over the next several hours, Kaji extracted an enormous amount of critical information about Les Soldats from its former enforcer. The name of every single inner circle member that was still living, along with the names of their agents in Tokyo-3. A random scattering of agents across the entire globe, along with exactly how to contact them. The only thing that could have been more damaging would have been to get their encryption codes for later seizures, but Chloe's copies of those codes had been lost when her previous home had been destroyed.

One truly fascinating tidbit was the statement that Ayanami could not have possibly have survived the attack at her former residence without an immediate organ transplant, which she could not possibly have done and recovered from sufficiently to attend classes in the two days she had apparently done so in. Especially combined with the comments she made as to the extraordinary efforts someone in NERV was taking to make sure that nobody other than Ayanami's regular physician could look at the pilot's medical records and live to speak of it. Kaji had known some of those details from the debriefing of Doctor Shimizu, but now every intelligence agency in the world knew that there was a secret. And the knowledge that there was a secret was the first step in figuring out what the secret was to an inquisitive mind.

* * *

The exposure of Gendo Ikari as a Soldat agent had shockwaves that spread throughout virtually every government in the world. It unveiled a breach in the security of the most important organization in the world of extraordinary magnitude. What made the matter worse was the fact that the Fourth Child's revelation implied that Les Soldats had put Gendo into his position as head of NERV, which meant that they had also penetrated the UN Security Council. Every single nation that had a representative on that council was forced to wonder if their representative was serving two masters, and what else might also be compromised.

The discovery of physical evidence tying the Commander to the organization, and that organization to an attempt on the life of a pilot that did result in the deaths of NERV personnel triggered additional inquiries. Various military and intelligence agencies around the world started poring over every recorded action of Commander Ikari that the investigative teams forwarded to them. They only found two incidents where the Commander had directly involved himself in a battle at all, and neither incident inspired any confidence in the Commander's suitability for his job in the eyes of any analyst with military experience.

The general consensus over the battle with the 13th Angel was that the Commander had been trying to set the pilots up to fail. The deployment orders he had given were an open invitation for a defeat in detail, and the analysts were forced to concede that had the Angel been able to take the Evangelions on one at a time instead of all of them at once, it would have had a decent chance at taking them all out. The only thing that had averted disaster was the fact that the pilots had recognized this themselves and gone against orders to formulate a deployment that stood a better chance of success.

The battle against the 15th Angel was less clear, but it was still quite possible that the Commander had been trying to keep the Third Child from rescuing the Fourth because he had wanted her to die. Even those who thought that he might have not wanted to risk throwing good money after bad by risking a second pilot and Evangelion to save the first unanimously agreed that Commander Ikari had no business being anywhere near children and that his actions afterwards could easily have made the pilots mentally unfit for duty. This made his conduct in that operation either a deliberate attempt to eliminate a pilot through malice or an inadvertent attempt to eliminate two pilots through incompetence. Neither inspired any confidence in his qualifications for the job.

It was generally agreed that a new Commander of NERV needed to be appointed. Someone who could pass a security investigation to clear him of any possible Soldat connections (When they decided how to do so), who had military experience in a command position, and who could keep a group of child soldiers, of which one had been trained to kill long before joining NERV, and the other two had been trained in combat by the deadlier comrade, functional and stable.

The French came up with a candidate almost immediately. Not wanting their rivals to gain such an honor when they hadn't won a foreign war without outside assistance in two hundred years, the Germans came up with a second candidate. The Americans also came up with one of their own who they felt was qualified for the position, as did the Japanese, the Chinese, the Russians, and quite a few other nations. The question of who would be taking command of NERV quickly degenerated into a continual argument, with no nation involved in the matter able to gain a substantive advantage over the others. With the matter up in the air, Kozo Fuyutsuki continued on as acting Commander, for no other reason than the fact that nobody had thought to relieve him of the post.

The other item of note that the various intelligence agencies found curious was the matter of Rei Ayanami. The fact that someone had gone out of their way to ensure that every single person other than her regular physician who performed a medical examination on the girl either died or vanished (A claim which was rapidly confirmed) was something they found very interesting. Even more interesting was the fact that Ayanami had officially been wheelchair-bound and without the use of her right hand after the attack of the 13th Angel. Yet when she vanished from NERV, she left the wheelchair behind, and security footage clearly showed her walking under her own power and using an allegedly crippled hand without any difficulties. There was definitely something unusual about Ayanami, and the spooks of the world all wanted to know what it was.

* * *

Hayate Aoki sat in a safehouse in Hokkaido composing another message to his contacts. The year had not been a good one for him or anyone else in Les Soldats. The project known as Le Grand Retour had come far too close to completion for comfort, only to backfire spectacularly at the last moment. The organization had lost dozens of agents in that project, and the only gain to come out of it was the total obliteration of Altena's faction, which would have been acceptable if it had not also created two elite killers who hated them at the same time.

Then, Breffort's Le Petit Retour project had backfired just as impressively. Now Breffort was dead, and there was a third elite killer out there, this one actively seeking their lives. He had been forced to flee from his home to ensure that he would not be hunted down by the revived Chloe, as had all the other surviving Soldat leaders. But it was the latest incident that was truly troubling.

An attempt to kill the renegade Noir clone had nearly killed two of the Evangelion pilots. And on top of that, Chloe had explicitly named Les Soldats as the party responsible when she retaliated against the agent responsible. Now the world knew of the organization, and believed that they were seeking to destroy the world. The fact that the Commander of NERV had been exposed as a Soldat who had sold his daughter for control of NERV made things even worse – and left behind conclusive evidence that Les Soldats had been behind one attempt on the life of a pilot – made things worse. A thousand years of secrecy had ended, and could never be regained. Especially since someone had decided to scan Gendo's copy of the Langumal Manuscript and post it on the internet, along with translations in five languages. Les Soldats was now more vulnerable than it had ever been in all the centuries that it had been in existence.

Every single agent they had in Tokyo-3 was now missing or dead, undoubtedly a result of further probing into Gendo's records. On top of that, warrants to bring in every single member of the inner circle for questioning had been issued by Interpol. Breffort had been conclusively connected with Les Soldats, and the French were turning all of his records, and the records of every business he had worked with over the past thirty years, upside down trying to track down further links to the organization. The others had barely managed to conceal the links from his personal networks to their own before their secrets were compromised along with his.

Lower level agents throughout the world were starting to have doubts about their decision to join, fearing the potential consequences if the world learned of their association with the organization. Some had already tried to break away and inform on them in a preemptive attempt to save themselves from what they saw as the inevitable punishment for a crime they hadn't intended to commit. There had been more executions of attempted traitors in the past week than in the past two years. Hayate and his colleagues around the world now spent most of their time holding their network of contacts together instead of seeking to advance their goals.

The door to the safehouse opened. Since he had not expected anyone to be arriving, he looked up, quietly palming a gun as he did so. The man who had entered the room was not someone that Hayate was inclined to be glad to see.

"You might have moved quickly enough to hide from your renegade, Aoki, but I had had people watching you long before you ran. I knew exactly where you went." Gendo Ikari calmly stated.

"You fool!" Hayate spat. "Your bumbling has set Les Soldats back decades. Did you really think you would be welcome here?" He raised his hand, seeking to shoot down the man who had so thoroughly demolished years of work with his independent scheming. But before he could fire, his hand started compacting in on itself as if caught in an invisible vise. With a cry of pain, the crumpled weapon dropped from his broken hand. As he looked down at his ruined appendage in shock, a pale girl with blue hair and red eyes stepped out from behind the ex-Commmander of NERV.

"This far away from Tokyo-3, nobody will be looking for AT Fields," Gendo said smugly. "Which means that any weapons you can use against me are worthless. With all the contact information you brought with you, I can assume your place in the leadership of Les Soldats and nobody will notice for some time. After all, I don't need to keep the entire organization intact, just enough of it to bring my scenario to completion, for the short time left until it is time to bring it to a successful conclusion.

"Rei, dispose of him."

The blue haired girl looked at Hayate calmly. The invisible vise appeared again, this time around his neck. He struggled for air for a few brief seconds. Then there was a sharp crack, and the world went dark.

* * *

A/N: One thing that often gets overlooked when a story character states that they're giving up their current career is whether or not they can come up with an alternative job they're qualified for. The ultimate problem with Kirika giving up being Noir is that she was trained to be that and nothing else.


	25. A Second Chance

Disclaimer: I do not own Noir or Evangelion

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 25

A Second Chance

Four men were seated in an interrogation chamber in the GeoFront. Each of them knew that they had been arrested on suspicion of being members of the criminal organization Les Soldats, and could infer that the others had been arrested for the same thing. Each of them also knew full well that the accusations were true. They didn't know that they were only members of Les Soldats in Tokyo-3 that hadn't either fled or been killed, but that didn't really matter. Given the general public opinion of their organization after the botched assassination of the renegade Langley, any people who had been missed wouldn't have been able to help them if they tried.

A woman walked into the room, wearing a long, hooded black coat. As she sat down, the men recognized her as Mireille Bouquet, the guardian of the Fourth Child. She took a pocketwatch out of a coat pocket, and started idly swinging it by the chain in one black gloved hand.

"You four are in a lot of trouble," She began. "You've been working for an agency that has been actively sabotaging a military force in time of war. That is an act of treason. Since NERV is responsible for protecting the entire world from the Angels, you have actually managed to commit treason against every single nation in the world at the same time, something which nobody's ever done before. The arguments in the UN over who will get to oversee your executions will likely take months.

"While I don't see anything wrong with every single one of you Soldat bastards coming to a bad end, we happen to need information more than we need the spectacle of executing a few low-end flunkies. So if you people decide to cooperate, we might be willing to go easy on you."

The four men were prepared to go to their graves to protect the secrets of Les Soldats. They knew full well that doing otherwise would just get them killed by their superiors. Then they recognized the symbol engraved on the watch. A Soldat symbol, of two kneeling women saluting each other with drawn swords. Then their minds put the pieces together.

A young woman who had a reputation for being good at killing.

Who was wearing black robes.

Whose gloved hands were black.

Who was idly swinging a watch displaying a symbolic representation of Noir.

They were speaking to Noir. Who had apparently turned against Les Soldats. This meant that there wasn't anyone their masters could send to punish them who was anywhere near as dangerous as the woman questioning them.

They immediately started babbling their heads off.

* * *

"Let me get this straight," Asuka said. "My cousin spent the past ten years at the headquarters of an international crime ring learning to be a professional killer?"

Kirika nodded.

"And you knew this the entire time?"

Another nod.

"Then _why didn't you tell me!_ "

"Asuka, if on the day she showed up, I had walked up and told you that your cousin was one of the deadliest killers in the world, would you have believed me?" Kirika pointed out.

Asuka was forced to admit that the other girl had a point. Especially since explaining how she knew would have involved confessing to god alone knew how many murders. Asuka sat down, her head resting in her hands.

"How did this happen?" She asked rhetorically.

"Because unlike Mireille's family, your aunt and uncle decided they valued themselves more than their child." Kirika said quite flatly.

"Well, I'm sorry if my relatives couldn't match up to the impeccable moral standards of the Bouquets." Asuka snapped.

Kirika snorted. "Impeccable moral standards? Asuka, Mireille's father was a _mob boss_."

Asuka sighed. Her relatives' integrity had just been judged against the standard set by a career criminal and had been found wanting. The only consolation for that depressing thought was that Kirika's father hadn't done any better on that test. "What do you think they got for selling her out?"

"I don't know. But in the long run, all it really got them was an early death at the hands of their own daughter."

" _What?_ Are you saying that Chloe murdered her own parents?"

"No, I'm saying she killed them. Your aunt and uncle were probably told something like 'Go to this place and kill everyone there', along with all the other Soldat agents there. The people they found there were me, Chloe and Mireille. They tried to kill us, and we killed them in self-defense. I doubt your aunt and uncle realized that they had been sent to kill their own child. I'm certain that Chloe didn't know that her parents were among those she killed until Mireille told her. If any murder was committed in those deaths, it was whoever decided to send them into a battle they didn't stand a chance of surviving, just because he wanted to see whether or not we could kill them all."

The more that Asuka learned about Les Soldats, the more reasons she found to dislike them.

"Are you sure she's no longer with them?"

"I'm sure. She killed one of their most senior leaders during that weekend she was out of town, and the rest of their leaders know it. They'll never forgive her for that, and even if they wanted to offer forgiveness, Chloe would never accept it."

"Good."

* * *

Ritsuko was sulking in her office. The fact that Gendo's constant scheming had come back to bite him on the ass wasn't really surprising. That wasn't what was bothering her. What bothered her was that he had apparently decided that he could only take one person with him when he fled the consequences of his backfired scheme, and that he had chosen his puppet over his mistress. As a result, she knew exactly how much she was valued by the Commander. Very little.

Given the activities of some of the people that Gendo had been working with on his scheming, Ritsuko was amazed that she hadn't been interrogated yet as a suspected accomplice. While neither of them had advertised it, the fact that she had been the Commander's lover hadn't been a secret, and questioning close associates of a suspect was a basic part of an investigation. Perhaps the investigators were all still questioning the Fourth Child and going through the Commander's papers.

Two men entered the office. Ritsuko supposed that that meant that they had gotten around to talking to her about Gendo. She was half right.

"Dr Akagi? We'd like to have a word with you concerning Pilot Ayanami." One of the men said.

"What?" Ritsuko was confused. Why were they more interested in the Commander's puppet instead of the Commander himself?

"We have statements of multiple incidents in which the First Child suffered injuries that should have been permanently crippling if not lethal. Despite this, she has recovered from those injuries within weeks, once within days.

"Ayanami's records, both personal and medical, are sealed to a degree far above that of the other pilots. The only person we have been able to identify that has looked at those records who has not either been killed or disappeared is you. That, combined with the fact that the renegade Commander has shown considerably greater interest in the wellbeing of the First Child than in any of the other pilots, even his own children, leads us to believe that you and the Commander are concealing something about her.

"Especially since we recently went over the security footage of EVA-01's hanger once we learned of the Fourth's suspicion that the extraction of the Third Child was sabotaged and found this." Ritsuko looked up at the mention that someone had figured out who had tampered with the recovery effort. Had the Commander not kept her continually busy with examining EVA-01 after the Fourth Child had succeeded in her recovery attempt, Ritsuko would have made a point of scouring the security footage for that information herself. The man presented a photograph with a timestamp recorded on it. A timestamp that stated the image had been taken the night before the failed extraction, at a time that nobody should have been in the hanger.

The photograph had obviously been put through numerous enhancements, mainly to improve clarity in low lighting. But the figure silhouetted in the photo could only be one of two people: Rei Ayanami or Kirika Yumura. And given that Kirika had nearly gotten herself killed trying to get her brother out of that entry plug using a plan she had come up with on the spur of the moment a few hours later, the thought that she had sabotaged a safer plan to get him out was plainly ludicrous.

Ritsuko knew that Rei had been carefully raised to have as little initiative as possible. She existed to do the Commander's bidding, not to think for herself. If she wasn't under orders or in a situation where standing orders applied, she tended to wait until she was given orders or placed in a situation where standing orders did apply. The reason her former apartment had ended up so filthy was because nobody had ever thought of ordering her to keep the place sanitary. As such, Ritsuko dismissed the notion that Rei had interfered with the recovery effort for her own reasons out of hand.

But if Rei wouldn't do something like that without orders, and Ritsuko hadn't given those orders, the only person who could have ordered Rei to do that was Gendo Ikari. Her lover had deliberately destroyed her efforts to finally escape her mother's shadow, nearly killing his son in the process. Or more likely, he had tried to murder his son, not caring what that would cost his mistress. Either way, it made it perfectly clear that Gendo cared for nobody other than himself and those who were of immediate use to him. Once someone outlived their usefulness to him, they would be discarded. Ritsuko idly wondered why Gendo had wanted his son dead. Probably the fact that the boy was loyal to his sister instead of his father.

Well, if the Commander couldn't be bothered to show anything resembling loyalty to her, she didn't see any reason why she should continue to show loyalty to him. She started mentally reviewing everything she knew about Rei Ayanami.

* * *

The three pilots stood outside a large sealed door. None of them were sure why they and half the Soldat investigation team had been called there. Their questions were answered when Dr Akagi joined them.

"A number of parties have expressed an interest in some of Rei's… peculiarities. Given some of the things that were recently revealed about her activities, it has been decided that you have a need to know on this issue." Ritsuko announced as she swiped an access card and entered a combination. The door opened. Inside the room was a pit filled with enormous skeletons, some of which had pieces of machinery grafted to them.

"These are failed prototypes of the Evangelions." Ritsuko said as she walked through the room, answering the question she knew was on everyone's mind. "It took years of work before the technology was first successfully completed in EVA-00. Each of these failures cost more money than the annual budget of some small countries. That's not I brought you here for, though. That would be in the back."

What was in the back turned out to be a small laboratory. The center of the room was dominated by a clear tube easily capable of holding a man, and the walls were lined with computers and instruments. But that wasn't what drew the attention of the people in the room. They were all staring at the enormous tank of LCL filled with doppelgangers of Rei Ayanami.

"What… in the world… is _that?_ " Asuka gasped.

"This is where Rei was born, or more accurately, where she was created."

"Created?" Kaji inquired.

"Rei isn't technically human. She is technically classified as a Nephilim: an artificially created hybrid made by splicing together human and Angel DNA."

"And what are those?" Shinji asked, pointing to the tank full of Reis.

"Backup bodies. We – Commander Ikari and I – periodically uploaded the memories of the active Rei into the mainframe here. If anything happened to that Rei, we would download those memories into one of the spares and activate it. This has happened four times so far.

"The first Rei was killed shortly before NERV was founded. The second died of a broken neck during the cross-synchronization experiment in Unit 01. The third was killed in her apartment during that break-in. I had a great deal of trouble getting the body into the GeoFront so I could swap it with an undamaged copy without anyone noticing. The fourth Rei survived her injuries when facing the 13th Angel, but was permanently crippled. Commander Ikari euthanized her so that we could replace her with an intact clone."

"So the reason why she didn't remember Chloe after that attack was because the copy didn't know her?" Asuka asked.

"Correct. The last memory backup Rei had undergone had taken place before your cousin had arrived in Tokyo-3. As a result, the replacement had no way of knowing who she was."

"And the surgical team that saved the life of the fourth Rei, were they killed to cover this up?" Kaji asked.

"I wasn't involved with that, but probably. They would have been able to tell that the fourth Rei had not suffered any of the major traumas that everyone knew that some of the previous Reis had suffered. They would have also been able to figure out that the fifth Rei was only pretending to be injured, and known that she could not possibly have recovered from those injuries in such a brief amount of time, if ever. Gendo must have wanted them silenced so that they couldn't ask inconvenient questions."

"I see." Kaji smirked. Every single statement he had acquired from that incident, from both Chloe and Dr. Shimizu, clearly stated that the killers had been sent from _SEELE_ , not Les Soldats. He now had the evidence he needed to justify official scrutiny into SEELE.

* * *

Shinji looked at the tank of Reis and saw red. His sister hadn't just been replaced in the figurative sense, she'd been replaced in the literal sense. When the Commander realized that he had a use for his daughter for his own schemes, rather than attempting to reclaim his child, he had cooked up a knockoff copy in a lab.

Would the Commander have done the same thing with him if he'd learned of his son's only potential use earlier on? Just created a Hitotsu Ayanami to pilot alongside Rei Ayanami and left him to rot?

Had this revelation come at an earlier point, Shinji might have eventually come to think of Rei as second sibling. But after learning that she had tried to kill him, apparently on his father's orders, she simply became an extension of the father that had abandoned his family, one more affront in a long line of acts of casual cruelty.

* * *

Asuka looked at the tank of Reis and knew fear. Throughout her entire life, she had believed that in order to truly matter, she had to excel. Her status as an Evangelion pilot was the pinnacle of her life-long need to not only succeed, but be seen as successful. Only a handful of people around the world had been found worthy of that position, and she had been neck-in-neck with the Third Child for the position of top pilot for almost the entire time that she had been at the front. The notion that pilots could be manufactured rather than selected was a direct attack on one of the key points that she used to define who she was.

If the one in hundreds of millions chance that someone could pilot could be duplicated in a lab, was she really that special? Was she selected as a pilot simply because somebody thought it would be easier to train her than to manufacture half-Angel copies of her to pilot in her place? If the Commander hadn't botched the job when he decided to copy his daughter, he could have ended up with someone who far surpassed the existing pilots, rather than being the undisputed worst of the lot, who hadn't even contributed in the last five battles. That screwup was likely the only reason why the Evangelions weren't all piloted by disposable copies of the people listed in the Marduk Report.

The nightmares she had suffered concerning her mother's suicide had finally started to fade after she had managed to contact her in EVA-02. But now she had a new thought to haunt her dreams: an image of a tank full of blue-haired, emotionless Asukas, waiting for her to make a mistake so that she could be discarded and one of them could take her place.

* * *

Kirika looked at the tank of Reis and was utterly horrified. The implications of this were far beyond what everyone else there was considering. Gendo wasn't trying to create an infinitely replaceable pilot, he was trying to mass produce Noir.

Kirika could imagine what any of the more ruthless members of Les Soldats could do with such a creation. Even with one normal Noir team, stopping Noir from killing anyone they set out to kill was an extraordinarily difficult proposition. She could only think of three such incidents in her own lifetime, none of which succeeded in stopping them when Noir came after them a second time. Doing so without taking casualties was a practically impossible one. With the ability to create replacement Noirs in a matter of days instead of years, without having worry about the massive costs in time and manpower to train and test the replacements, Les Soldats could kill absolutely anyone in the world, and nothing could stop them. No matter how many times Noir was defeated in a mission, another pair of Noir would inevitably turn up to try again. An infinite succession of master assassins, slowly wearing down any possible resistance like waves eroding a rock until they could get to the ultimate target. With a weapon like that, Les Soldats could terrorize the leaders of the world into doing anything they wanted, for as long as they wanted. They could effectively rule the world.

Even though the copies that had been made of her were hopelessly defective, Kirika had no intention of allowing the abomination they represented to continue to exist. She walked over to a console and firmly pressed a button labeled 'Emergency Purge'.

Kirika watched with cold satisfaction as the army of counterfeit Saplings dissolved into the LCL.

* * *

Ritsuko watched as the clones all dissolved and started to laugh. After learning of the depth of her lover's betrayal, the destruction of the spare Reis, and more importantly, the reason for their destruction, struck her as a tremendous joke.

Not one person even considered the possibility that Rei had been created from Yui Ikari. They all thought that she had been created from Yui's daughter. And Yui's daughter had destroyed the copies because she had taken offense at the duplication. Ritsuko supposed that if imitation was supposed to be the sincerest form of flattery, what looked to be a bad imitation at first glance could be seen as an insult.

The funny thing was, in a way the First and Fourth Children really were distorted copies of each other. Both were carefully shaped their entire lives to be little more than an extension of their guardian's will, a tool to implement someone else's agenda. Only the Fourth had broken free and decided to be her own person, while the First remained nothing more than a puppet for Gendo's schemes. Perhaps that was why the Fourth was so offended by Rei's origins – she could see in them what she could have become.

But even if the theory that the people who had just seen the Reiquarium had formed was wrong, it would still be enough to destroy whatever good will the world had left for Gendo Ikari. There was no way that something this scandalous would stay hidden for long, now that someone outside the conspiracy knew about it. The notion that Gendo would not only sell someone out for his own gain, and then clone that someone so that they could still work for him, was just too juicy a scandal to pass up. The only thing that could have been worse would have been the perverted speculation that would have come up if the public had tried to figure out exactly _why_ Gendo had wanted to have several hundred teenaged clones of his dead wife…

Gendo was now totally alone, without a single resource except for the last remaining clone of a brilliant project that would forever be remembered as a heartless father's cruel attempt to have his cake and eat it as well. And it was all thanks to the children he had discarded. Her laughter increased as she dwelt on the irony.

As her laughter grew more and more hysterical, the others started to become concerned. Eventually, they dragged her, still laughing, to the infirmary for a psychological evaluation.

* * *

After returning to her home, Kirika considered the implications of what she had seen further. As she thought on it, she was forced to come to the understanding that there was only one way that Chloe could have survived her wound at the Soldat Manor – she didn't.

The Chloe that had been in Tokyo-3 for the past several months had been another Nephilim, a copy of the original Chloe just like Rei had been a copy of her, only this time around, Les Soldats had gotten it right. Kirika knew the original Chloe better than anyone else alive, and she hadn't been able to tell the difference between the original and the replacement, despite the fact that she had known the original was dead, having killed her herself.

That explanation explained why Chloe had been so insistent that she had been hospitalized since shortly after that time in China, and thus couldn't have attacked Mireille at the Manor. The memory upload of the original must have been taken around that time, and never been updated. So far as the clone knew, everything that the original Chloe had done between that point and her death never happened. She had been given the explanation of being seriously ill for months to keep her from wondering about the massive gap in her memories.

So perhaps the description of the new Chloe as a perfect copy of the old one was inaccurate. She wasn't so much a perfect copy of the original as she was a perfect copy of the original as she had been around the time she killed Shao Li. That was before Chloe had unknowingly killed her own parents. Before she had tried to turn Mireille against her. Before she had tried to kill Mireille and been killed in turn.

All this time, Kirika had been blaming Chloe for things that she technically hadn't done. This Chloe was from a time before the pain she felt from advances that had gone completely unnoticed and the jealousy from being forced to watch a misinterpreted relationship from afar boiled over into the psychotic hatred that had forced Kirika to kill the original.

Kirika was forced to come to an uncomfortable conclusion: She owed Chloe an apology.

* * *

Asuka entered the Fourth Child's apartment to pick up the girl's homework. Since being confined to quarters (Or the GeoFront, if summoned for an interrogation or other reason), Hikari had been using Asuka to ferry assignments to the other pilots, figuring that since Asuka hadn't told her that they were unconscious, they could still do their homework (For some reason, the implication that Rei had dropped out of school when she ran away offended Hikari more than the fact that she had deserted her post in time of war). So Shinji and Kirika still had to do their class assignments, only without attending the classes. Since that meant that they were going without the interminable Second Impact lectures that took place instead of anything remotely interesting or educational during most of the periods, Asuka privately thought that they were coming out ahead in the deal.

"Asuka?" Kirika asked. "I need you to do something for me while you're out."

"What?" She inquired.

"I need you to put this in Chloe's locker, without her noticing." With that, Kirika handed her a small object.

Asuka looked at the object in confusion. She couldn't possibly imagine why somebody would want to give something like that as a gift, anonymously or not.

"Is this some kind of joke?"

Kirika shook her head. "She'll know what it means, and who sent it. Don't worry, it's a message she'll be glad to receive."

"And why do you want me to hide it in her locker instead of just giving it to her?"

"Well, the proper way to deliver it would cause Section 2 to think I'm trying to kill her. Leaving it in her locker seems like an appropriate alternative."

Privately, Asuka doubted that Section 2 would mind if Kirika tried to kill Chloe. They had not been happy when they learned that the person who had killed their former commander had stepped forward, and that they couldn't do anything about it. They were even less happy about the fact that Chloe had apparently offered to let to let the commander's team live, but that they had chosen to die when they opened fire on her. But what really annoyed them wasn't the fact that a fourteen year old girl had told an entire Section 2 team that she could kill them all if she wanted to, but the fact that she had been right.

Asuka shook her head, wondering at what kind of bizarre tradition she was being asked to participate in.

* * *

Hikari wrung out the mop and emptied the bucket down the bathroom drain. Then she went to put the cleaning materials back into the storage closet. Cleaning duty wasn't exactly the most interesting of school activities, but everyone had to do it on occasion, even the class rep. Walking back to the classroom to get her bag, she saw the other person in her class who had the duty today gathering her things as well.

Chloe Langley had been one of the two class enigmas the moment she walked in the door. Virtually everything of note that the rest of the class knew about her they learned because they could occasionally get Kirika, the other class enigma, to translate her conversations with her cousin. Even then, whenever someone actually looked at the translations and thought about them for a while, they realized that the girl hadn't actually said very much, as if she was intentionally choosing her words to be as uninformative as possible.

Her conversations with Kirika were even less informative. Whenever those two talked, they invariably did so in a language that nobody else in the class understood. And just to make things difficult for anyone who might want to learn a third language so that they could understand the two, they changed languages regularly. Those two apparently knew at least seven languages, only three of which could be understood by anyone else in the class: Japanese, English, and German.

That language issue made the biggest mystery about those two even more mysterious: the connection between the two. Everyone knew that the two had known each other for some time. Any details beyond the fact that they had studied under the same teacher (Who had rather extreme notions as to how to run a phys ed class) were unknown. The only thing that anyone else had been able to infer beyond that was that despite a history which Chloe apparently had fond memories of, Kirika was _not_ happy to see Chloe again, something that came to a head when the amnesiac practically bit the other girl's head off during the time when Shinji was in a coma. Asuka had managed to bring the two to a truce of some sort, but the class as a whole still hadn't figured out what the argument was about.

Kaworu's interactions with Chloe were something the class could understand, though half the class was wondering if the boy was insane. Clumsily trying to court a girl was one thing, but continuing to do so after the girl in question had made it quite clear that she not only wasn't interested, but would rather not be anywhere near the boy, _ever_ , was another. Doing so when said girl was one of the participants in the legendary Gym Kendo Duel was practically asking to be beaten up. Yet despite Chloe's repeated and vehement rejections of her suitor, he still kept it up. Hikari wouldn't have been surprised if someone told her that he was somewhere nearby, spying on Chloe even now.

As Chloe opened her shoe locker, she suddenly froze. Hikari turned to look at her, wondering what could cause such a sudden reaction. She watched as Chloe reached out a shaking hand and gently removed an object that someone had placed in there. In that instant, the list of mysteries about Asuka's formerly long-lost cousin was incremented. The look on Chloe's face as she gazed on the small object was one of pure, unadulterated joy. The only thing Hikari could think of that would inspire that kind of look would be to find a dozen roses, a box of candy and a juicy love letter from the guy of her dreams in her locker.

It was an extremely strange reaction to having been given a fork.

* * *

Hikari had been right. Kaworu had been spying on Chloe. He still had yet to figure out why the girl fascinated him so, or why she was so repelled by him. As a result, he did see Chloe find the fork that had been placed in her locker.

Kaworu was highly ignorant of Lillim customs. He didn't know why the girl was so delighted to be gifted with silverware, but he assumed it was part of some courtship ritual he was unaware of. Perhaps her reaction to him was because he had failed to observe some form of protocol? He would have to think on that.

Far in the distance, the light of another soul started to shine. Tabris smiled. His brother Armisael had arrived.

* * *

Alarms blared as the bridge of NERV scrambled to activity. Acting Commander Kozo Fuyutsuki strode in taking the seat recently occupied by his former student.

"What's the situation?" He asked.

"The Angel has appeared on the outskirts of the city," Hyuga reported. "It's currently holding its position. There has been no attempt to breach the GeoFront."

"Just as well, considering that we still haven't finished sealing the breach made in the armor by the 14th Angel. Major Katsuragi, order the pilots to their Evangelions."

"All of them, sir?" She asked.

"Yes. I'm restoring the Fourth Child to active duty. We can't afford to handicap ourselves. Warn them to be careful. This one appears to want us to come to it, just like the last one did. It may have a surprise ready for us."

"When was the last time an Angel didn't have a surprise in store for us?" she responded rhetorically.

* * *

Three Evangelions emerged from their underground lair and headed towards their target. The 16th Angel was an enormous ring of pure light, hovering in the air but not actually doing anything. The pilots weren't fooled by the innocent appearance. They agreed with Misato: The Angels almost always had a nasty surprise waiting for their opponents. The last one anyone could remember that didn't was the 9th. They doubted that this one would be considerate enough to be like that one.

As the unit with the long range ordnance, EVA-00 was the first to open fire. The Angel suddenly unwound from its ring-like form, showing itself to be a snakelike creature, which swerved around the blast of energy and shot towards its attacker. Kirika screamed in sympathetic pain as the Angel collided with the Evangelion and started to bore into the armor.

"Imouto!" Shinji cried, opening fire at the tail end of the Angel. Despite the closer range, his efforts proved equally fruitless as the rear of the Angel assaulted EVA-01 in the same way that the fore assaulting EVA-00. Thinking that having both ends occupied would render the Angel immobile, Asuka tried to cut the Angel in half. Unfortunately, the midsection of the Angel could still maneuver to a degree and flipped over Asuka's blade to wrap itself around EVA-02's throat.

All three pilots screamed in agony as the Angel attempted to take control of their Evangelions.

* * *

Crowds of people were packed into the underground shelter. Hundreds of people were packed into the building, waiting for the all-clear and hoping that the Angel wouldn't smash this shelter in and massacre the survivors like the 14th did. Given that some of the students had made the mistake of saying that one of the pilots had fled the city and two more were apparently injured in the previous battle and not yet recovered, a great many people in the shelter were starting to get worried.

Chloe knew that they were right to be worried. She knew that the pilots hadn't been injured, but telling them that a pilot had been grounded for trying to shoot her commanding officer wouldn't improve things. Especially since NERV had been trying to keep as much of the scandal concerning Gendo Ikari and Les Soldats out of the media as they possibly could until they could make enough progress in cleaning up the mess to enable their PR people to add a positive spin to the situation. But the matter of the pilots wasn't why they should be worrying. Chloe knew that in the events that the pilots failed to stop the Angel, it would be heading straight towards the shelter she was in, looking for her, and killing anyone else who got in the way.

It was a troubling thought. She was one of the deadliest killers alive, her code name known and feared by people around the world, and yet she was completely helpless. Every single person she considered a friend was fighting a monster to protect her, even if they didn't know they were ultimately protecting her as an individual rather than as one member of the thousands in Tokyo-3 that were also potentially endangered by the Angel. She did not like being defenseless.

"Aha!" Kensuke called out triumphantly. "I've managed to hack into footage of the battle going on."

The eyes of the Section 2 team that had taken to following her around ever since she had admitted to being a former Soldat (Whether it was to ensure she wasn't targeted by someone trying to silence her or to watch her in the hopes that she would do something that would justify their taking revenge for their former leader, she didn't know. Privately, she hoped it was the first. That would just make them foolishly overzealous – and of dubious competence, since they hadn't done a thing about Nagisa - rather than suicidally stupid. The only reason she put up with them was because she knew she could shake them off or kill them any time she wanted to) turned to stare at the boy. Chloe smirked. Kensuke would be in for an interesting time once his actions were reported up the chain of command.

A crowd pressed around the young hacker. They did not like what they were seeing. All three Evangelions were out fighting the Angel, but they appeared to be losing. The Angel had somehow attached itself to all three Evangelions, and at the points where it had connected, the robots were swelling and distorting, like some kind of horrifically corrupted wound.

Chloe looked at the screen from her position at the back of the crowd. Then she looked at the small fork that she had just received. Then she turned and slipped away from the crowd, heading towards the surface, her departure unnoticed by her 'escort'.

If Kirika had sent her that fork, then she was willing to give her a second chance. Chloe didn't know what had made her ex-partner relent, but she wasn't going to let that chance go to waste. With Altena dead, every single person that mattered to her was on the surface, fighting that Angel. She might not be able to fight the Angel, but she did know exactly how to draw it away from her friends and give them a chance to take it down.

Standing on the surface, Chloe stared at the battle being waged across the city. From behind her, she heard the sound of rapidly approaching footsteps. It seemed that one of her guards was observant enough to realize that she had left. Maybe they weren't completely hopeless.

"Alright, Angel," She said to herself, activating her AT Field. "You want me so badly? Here I am!"

* * *

The bridge was in a state of panic. The Evangelions were being slowly corrupted by the Angel, and nothing they could think of could stop or even slow it down. Then the unexpected happened.

"New AT Field has appeared!" Aoba reported.

"Analysis is coming in. Pattern is Blue!" Maya added.

The bridge crew groaned. The last thing they needed was a second Angel to appear when they were doing so badly with the one they were already facing. They weren't expecting the reaction of the 16th Angel to the probable 17th Angel. The Angel removed itself from the Evangelions and made a straight line dash towards the other Angel, as if it was planning to attack it like it had the Evangelions.

But if that was its intent, the Evangelions didn't let the Angel do it. Drawing their progressive knives, the three Evangelions plunged them into the 16th's fleeing form. In its haste to reach its goal, it didn't even attempt to evade before continuing onwards. As a result, each of the three knives carved a long, deep trench into the Angel's body as it pulled its body free of the blades lengthwise. Mortally wounded, the Angel flew across the city, ignoring the fact that it had virtually cut itself into three pieces getting away from the Evangelions, spraying LCL across the city as it flew. But sheer willpower could not overcome the severity of its injuries for long, and the Angel crashed into the ground before it had made it across the city, unable to remain in the air. Undeterred by the crash, it continued to crawl towards its goal, managing to travel another two miles before it ultimately bled out and stopped.

Less than a minute after the 16th Angel stopped moving, the other AT Field vanished. Everyone was too busy worrying about the pilots and the Evangelions to wonder what happened to it until later.

* * *

Tabris watched sadly as his final sibling died at the hands of the Lillim. He was angered that the Lillim would stoop so low as to use his Father as bait to lure his brother into a trap. Had that not happened, he was sure that Armisael would have been victorious.

Despite that, Tabris knew that one good thing had come of the battle. The Lillim's cowardly use of his Father to trick his brother was indisputable proof that Adam was here. Somewhere in the depths of the GeoFront, Tabris' father waited for one of his children to come to him. And as the last Messenger, it was his duty to do so.

Now that he knew that he had come to the right place, Tabris had no intention of leaving until he had found Adam. And he would find Adam. It was only a matter of time…

* * *

A/N: 'Hitotsu' is a possible Japanese translation of 'One', as 'Rei' is a possible Japanese translation of 'Zero'.

How liable is a clone for the actions of a previous clone committed after the cloning was performed? It's a question that could easily have been brought up with Rei in NGE (If Ritsuko had considered Rei responsible for the death of her mother), but never was.


	26. The 1 1/2th Angel

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir. The actions of any referenced historical figures in regards to Les Soldats are entirely fictitious.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 26

The 1 ½th Angel

Nemu Sakamoto hated the Second Child's cousin. She wasn't alone in this – virtually every other member of NERV Section 2 working in Tokyo-3 shared that sentiment. Captain Arima had been a popular leader, and his former subordinates did not like the idea of letting the girl who openly admitted to killing him get away scot free. The insulting implication that the killer had so _courteously_ offered to allow the Captain and his team to run away and save themselves and brought their fate upon themselves when they didn't take the offer didn't help. But what really aggravated Section 2 was the fact that the fourteen year old girl's belief that she could take out ten men who had her outnumbered, outgunned, and surrounded turned out to be highly justified.

The only thing that had kept Section 2 from going after the Langley girl, legal immunity or not, was the fact that Agent Bouquet had made a point of explaining exactly how good the girl was, and that the only person in the world who stood a chance of taking her on and winning was the Fourth Child. As the only person in Section 2 who had fired her weapon in anger since signing up who wasn't dead, her words carried a great deal of weight. Besides, most of Section 2 had seen how good the Fourth Child was, either first hand or in a recording, and they could easily figure out what would happen if they picked a fight with someone who was the girl's near equal.

Nemu had been one of those that had witnessed the Fourth Child in action first hand. She had been there when the Most Holy Order of the Angels of Judgment had made their spectacularly doomed attempt to eliminate the Second and Fourth Children. She had watched as the girl defeated eight opponents before she had fully grasped that the men in question were opponents in the first place. She knew full well that if she had been one of those eight attackers, she wouldn't have done any better. If nothing else, she hadn't had the slightest notion that it was possible to kill a man with an ID card before the Fourth demonstrated exactly how to do so.

That wasn't the only thing that Nemu had taken away from that incident. The dressing down she had received for failing to recognize a threat until her principal had neutralized it herself had been memorable. Not wanting to face anything like that a second time, Nemu had made an effort into improving her observational skills. Which was why she was the only member of her team to notice the Langley girl turn and leave the shelter while the others were glaring at the boy who was talented enough to crack part of NERV's firewall and stupid enough to publicly announce that he had done so.

Turning to follow the girl, Nemu had to wonder what had inspired her to head towards the surface during an Angel attack. There wouldn't be anyone out there to interact with, most of the buildings were retracted below the surface, so there wasn't anywhere to go within the city, and all public transportation had been shut down for the duration of the emergency, so it wasn't possible to go anywhere outside the city. What could the Langley girl possibly be doing?

The answer to that question was definitely something Nemu wasn't expecting. She didn't think anyone would be crazy enough to go outside during an Angel battle and call out "Here I Am!" to the Angel. The thing that made it even more unbelievable was the fact that the Angel apparently heard the girl from across the city and immediately broke off its attack on the Evangelions to go after her, only to be ripped to shreds by the foes it made the mistake of turning its back on.

Nemu shuddered as the girl she had been ordered to observe calmly turned around and re-entered the shelter. What in the world did those Les Soldats people _do_ to the kids they commandeered to make them so dangerous that Angels would consider one of them a greater threat than anything NERV could throw at them?

* * *

The 16th Angel had been defeated. The Evangelions had returned to the GeoFront, and were being checked over for contamination. The pilots had returned unharmed, except for the fact that they needed strong painkillers to get over the psychic pain induced by being synchronized with their EVAs while they took damage (An unfortunately common occurrence. The single most difficult duty of the pilot's physicians was working out exactly how much painkiller was needed to recover from the aftermath of their 'injuries' without using enough to risk drug addiction). With the immediate post-battle matters taken care of, the command staff of NERV could now focus on three questions that had come up during the battle. Why did the Angel break off the battle to go after the source of the second AT Field? Where did that second AT Field come from? And where was it now?

An examination of the terrain around the point the AT Field came from provided a possible answer for the latter two questions. There was a surface entry point to one of the emergency shelters within 100 meters of the point the AT Field manifested. That presented the very real possibility that the extra Angel had come from the shelter and returned there after the battle ended. Remembering the carnage that had erupted the last time an Angel got loose near one of the shelters, a video link was quickly established to the shelter. The bridge crew heaved a great sigh of relief when there was no evidence of a massacre like the 14th had inflicted.

More confusing was the fact that the Magi had, after some further computation, refined its analysis of the AT Field pattern and classified the mystery Angel as the 1st Angel. Misato knew that declaration was impossible, as Adam had been lost during Second Impact. In any case, she had seen Adam herself before Second Impact. The thing was the same size and roughly the same shape as an Evangelion, had it showed up in Tokyo-3, it would have been noticed.

As Misato and the rest of her staff tried to figure out that mystery, two calls came in. The first was from a panicked Section 2 agent on the team assigned to observe Asuka's cousin reporting that for some reason the 16th Angel had gone out of its way to try to attack the girl. Misato would have discarded that report as plainly absurd had it not come from the same shelter that the mystery Angel had been detected near. The other was from the Fourth Child.

"Misato?" Kirika said, her voice slurred by painkillers.

"I'm a little busy, Kirika. Can this wait?" Misato asked.

"I know where the other AT Field came from."

 _That_ casual statement got the attention of everyone on the bridge.

"Where?"

"Get all of the Children and the Saplings together, along with someone from the Soldat investigation team. I'll explain then. There's no point in going over this several times."

"Saplings?" She hadn't heard that term before.

"Mireille, and Chloe, and myself."

Why was Chloe involved? Was there something to the Section 2 agent's report after all?

"Okay. Meet up in Conference Room 19 in an hour."

"Good. That will give me enough time for my head to clear from these painkillers. Yumura out."

* * *

Chloe wasn't sure why she had been summoned back to Central Dogma. It wasn't likely that there was going to be another interview about Soldat operations this soon after a battle. She just wished that she didn't have to go in with Kensuke. The boy was so overtly thrilled about being allowed to enter the headquarters of NERV that he hadn't seemed to realize that the reason he was being taken there was because he had just been arrested for breaking into a classified computer network. Kensuke might not be stupid (being able to get any data out of the secured sections of the MAGI proved that), but he clearly lacked anything resembling sense.

Kirika was waiting for her at the entrance to Central Dogma. After what she had seen of the footage of the battle, Chloe was glad to see that she wasn't hurt.

"Are you alright, Kirika?" She asked.

Kirika nodded. "I'll be okay, but I'm starting to remember what we used to go through in our old job fondly. At least back then, we only had to worry about getting shot. That doesn't hurt nearly as much as what the last three Angels put me through. Come along, the others are waiting for us."

The two walked away, leaving Kensuke to be dragged off to the not so tender mercies of an annoyed Section 2, openly wondering what Kirika had meant about her old job and getting shot. The two continued into the giant pyramid in silence until they reached their destination. Inside the conference room, Chloe found Mireille, both of the other pilots, their guardian, the current acting Commander of NERV, and several people from the Soldat investigation team.

"So what is this about, Kirika?" She asked.

"Chloe, you remember how you told your cousin that the last time you saw me before coming to Tokyo-3 was during that run-in we had with the Hong Yiban Triad, right? After which you spent several months ill in a hospital? And that Mireille said that you hadn't been expected to live?" Kirika inquired.

"What of it?" Chloe couldn't see why this would be of interest to the group of people gathered in the conference room.

"You see, the reason you hadn't been expected to live was because the disease you caught was rigor mortis. The last time Mireille and I had seen you before you turned up in Tokyo-3 was at your funeral."

* * *

Every single person in the room gaped in shock at the announcement that girl that had come in with Kirika was dead.

"What are you talking about?" Asuka protested. "How can you say she's dead? If she's dead, who is she?"

"I know that Chloe is dead because I killed her myself, the day before I was first approached by NERV." Kirika stated calmly. "The person you see here is a Nephilim, a half-Angel copy of your cousin made by Les Soldats in the same way that Commander Ikari created Rei in a botched attempt to make a copy of me. Only this time, they did a much better job of it. I know Chloe better than anyone else alive, and I couldn't tell she wasn't the original somehow returned from the dead.

"That's the reason you don't remember anything after that time in China, Chloe. The memories copied from the previous you must have been taken around that time period, so you never had the memories from beyond that point to lose.

"And unless I miss my guess, a person who is part Angel could potentially have some of the abilities of the Angels, such as AT Fields. Am I right in assuming that you're the source of the AT Field that distracted the last Angel long enough for us to take it down?"

Chloe nodded slowly.

"That explains quite a lot of things that happened since I came here." Chloe admitted. "When I went after Ayanami, she somehow made a barrier out of thin air when I tried to stab her. One of the men in the response team I ran into when I left the building almost shot me, but another one of those barriers appeared and stopped the bullet. Later on, I learned it was called an AT Field when I tried to create one on purpose and a NERV investigative team showed up outside my apartment trying to figure out where it had come from.

"Then when the Angel that smashed into the GeoFront came, I could literally sense it as it headed for the shelter. It went straight for the shelter I was in, and only attacked groups of people near where I was, ignoring anyone who ran a different direction than I did. I don't know why, but I'm certain it was looking for me. Something that was confirmed during the last battle.

"There are other things it explains. Like why all of the various scars I picked up in years of training and fighting have disappeared. And why my appearance changed so dramatically when I was in the hospital."

To explain the meaning of her last statement, Chloe reached up and put her hand to one eye. Peeling off a contact lens, she revealed the eye beneath it to be the same shade of red as Rei's.

* * *

The members of the Soldat investigation team were very upset when they learned that their enemy could create half-Angel assassins. They were even more upset when they learned that if anything happened to the current Chloe, it was quite possible that they would be able to create a replacement Chloe, one who didn't remember any of the events that caused her to change sides, and as such would be a loyal Soldat. Mireille morbidly wondered if somewhere in the world Les Soldats had a tank of albino, blue-haired Mireilles to complete their collection of half-Angel pseudo-Saplings.

The representatives of NERV were more concerned with the fact that the Angels considered the young Nephilim to be their priority target whenever they spotted her. They couldn't really tell if the Angels could use the girl to trigger a Third Impact, but the Angels clearly thought that they could, and the possibility that the Angels were right was too horrifying to contemplate.

Then there was the revelation that Rei also had Angelic abilities, and had vanished along with Commander Ikari. Both sides found that part disturbing.

Fuyutsuki ordered a medical examination of Chloe to confirm that she was indeed a Nephilim. Given the implications that both groups had brought up, if their suspicions were true, then Chloe Langley had just become the one thing that NERV had to protect at all costs – and as a direct result of that, the single most important person in the world.

As Chloe went through a series of examinations intended to search for an S2 organ, Asuka considered what she had just learned. Her cousin was dead, killed by one of her coworkers. On top of that, she couldn't really do anything about it. Given the skill gap between the two of them, there was no way that any attempt to avenge the death of her cousin would amount to more than a suicide attempt – one that would very likely succeed.

There was also the question of what she was to make of this new Chloe. She had treated the copy of her cousin as a member of her family for what amounted to the entire life of the clone. And the clone had done the same to her. While the relationship might have technically been a lie, neither of them had known that. As a result, the lie might as well have been the truth in the eyes of both parties.

That decided it, Asuka thought. If Chloe's oldest friend couldn't tell the difference between the original and the clone (Though given that Kirika hadn't known that Chloe had liked her until she had been hit over the head with the fact, the part about knowing Chloe better than anyone had to be taken with a grain of salt), then the two were the same person for all intents and purposes. The new Chloe might be part Angel, but she was still her cousin.

* * *

Three pilots and one Nephilim sat together in an otherwise empty lounge while the results of Chloe's various tests were processed. Kirika was giving Chloe a description of what her predecessor had done with her life after the two of her had diverged. Asuka was relieved when she learned that her younger cousin was not actually responsible for the death of her own parents. Shinji choked on his drink when he learned that Chloe had been naked during the kiss he had witnessed while trapped in his Evangelion. Both non-Noir pilots were horrified by the description of the original Chloe's psychotic breakdown and death.

"In the end, everything that I've been blaming you for since you came here was something that was done by her, not by you, Chloe. And for that, I have to apologize." Kirika finished.

"The scary thing is that I can see myself doing a lot of those things." Chloe said, accepting the apology. "If someone was trying to kill me in a battle, relative or not, I would take them out first and worry about who they were later, if I ever bothered to investigate at all. And I know that I had seriously considered using what happened in Corsica ten years ago to separate you from Mireille."

"And making passes at people while in the bath?" Asuka asked, not wanting to miss a chance to poke fun at all the others at once. The look on Chloe's face was answer enough.

After Chloe had managed to regain her composure, she asked "What about the Trials? The other me failed the moment you killed her, but I'm still alive."

Kirika looked puzzled. "I hadn't thought of that. I doubt that the rules cover the possibility that one of the Saplings could return from the dead after the Trials ended. It's not like it could have happened before now."

Chloe nodded. "First serious controversy in the Trials since 1429. It's too bad that the only people with the authority to make a ruling are trying to kill us."

"What happened in 1429?" Shinji asked curiously.

"In 1429, a Sapling named Jeanne ended up being the only Sapling of her generation to survive the training process. Since Noir is a title meant for two, not one, the High Priestess of the time had a great deal of trouble figuring out what to do with her. She was eventually sent to try to prevent the English, who at the time were not under Soldat influence, from gaining control of France, which they did control."

"She succeeded in changing the course of the war brilliantly." Kirika continued. "Then she got caught up in her own propaganda about being a god-sent warrior charged with protecting France from foreign control. She decided that foreign control included Les Soldats."

"Her superiors learned of her defection before she could take any major action against them, and arranged for her to be captured and turned over to political enemies, who had her burned at the stake. Her tale is generally considered a caution about the dangers of excessive pride and disloyalty."

Shinji and Asuka winced. Be too prideful and we'll arrange for you to be burned alive. That was a rather nasty lesson to teach to young children. Then Asuka, who'd been schooled in Germany and had studied European history as a result, made the connection.

"Jeanne… you don't mean _Jeanne D'Arc?_ " She gasped.

Chloe nodded. "You'd be amazed at how many events in history were shaped by Soldat influences. If the investigators ever find the main historical archives, virtually every history book about European history from 1100 onwards will have to be rewritten, along with African history from the 1300s, Asian history outside of Japan from the mid 1500s onward, and all countries founded by European colonies from the moment they started. The investigators might actually find those records, come to think of it. Last I checked, they were at the manor, and the investigators already know where to find that."

"Why not Japan?" Shinji asked.

"Iemetsu Tokugawa learned of Les Soldats and considered them a threat to his rule. He evicted virtually every foreigner in the country and restricted all trade, foreign travel, and international relations to very strictly controlled limits just to keep them out, a policy his successors continued for two hundred years. It worked, which is why they made a point of overthrowing the shogunate as soon as the controls loosened enough to allow them to regain a foothold."

Shinji was taken aback by the thought that the two centuries of xenophobia known as Sakoku had actually been a labor of generations to hold off the forces of a shadowy conspiracy, and that the civil wars of the Bakamatsu era were the conspiracy's revenge. Somehow he doubted that any of the various conspiracy theorists out there had managed to guess _that_ one. Then Kirika groaned.

"What's wrong, imouto?"

"I just realized… The people who are most likely to find those archives are the French. When they do, they'll learn that Jeanne D'Arc was a Sapling who turned against her controllers, just like me. Those people are determined enough to turn me into a national hero as it is. When they find a point of commonality between me and one of their country's _patron saints_ , they'll never leave me in peace."

Asuka looked at the Fourth Child and laughed. After all of the troubles they'd had lately, worries about overenthusiastic hero worshipping was a refreshingly simple thing to have to deal with.

* * *

The results of the examination came in. The medical scans revealed a spherical 'tumor' within Chloe's lower abdomen that bore a high degree of similarity to the fragments of S2 organs recovered from the various Angel battles. The MAGI then did some data extrapolation and decreed that it was quite possible that if that S2 organ was combined with one from an Angel, an Impact-like event would occur. Chloe Langley was the key to triggering Third Impact.

"So there is a horde of monsters seeking to destroy the Earth, and in order to do so, they have to sacrifice a specific young maiden for unknown reasons. It sounds like a generic movie plot. If it wasn't for the fact that I've seen the Angels come after me with my own eyes, I'd think this was a joke." Chloe muttered.

Asuka nodded. "It does seem like that, doesn't it. Of course, if this was a movie, there would be some brave hero fighting the Angels and seeking to win your heart. I don't see anyone like that around here, do you?"

"Asuka, Chloe?" Shinji said, walking into the room. "Mireille and Kirika are about ready to leave."

Asuka and Chloe started giggling. Shinji didn't dare ask why.

* * *

One of the favorite topics of the students of Tokyo-3 Junior High on the first school day after an Angel attack was the question of how many of the Children would be showing up, and in what condition. Given that NERV had apparently been down to one pilot until shortly before the last battle, and that the footage Kensuke had shown to everyone in his shelter showed that NERV only won the last battle by the skin of its teeth, everyone was expecting the number of pilots to show up for class to be low, with said pilots in bad shape. Because of this, everyone was pleasantly surprised to see all of the pilots (minus Ayanami, who had since been removed from the class roster) show up unharmed.

Nobody asked the pilots for details about why two of their number had been out for so long, nor did they ask about what had distracted the Angel at the critical moment during the final battle. The people who had been in the shelter with Kensuke had understood why the boy had been taken to NERV HQ far better than he had, and spread the word that prying for more details than what they had witnessed would probably get Section 2 to come after them as well. But the knowledge that openly seeking information could get them in trouble didn't prevent them from watching and hoping they let something slip. This was why there was a crowd watching when Chloe opened her locker and a large pile of assorted silverware fell out.

"What's with the silverware?" Shinji asked.

"I don't have a clue." Chloe said. Emptying the remaining utensils from the locker, she found that a note had been wrapped around one of the forks. Opening it, she saw a familiar if highly unwelcome query:

_Do you want to become one with me?_

_To be of one mind and body?_

_It is a very, very comfortable feeling._

"Nagisa." She snarled, crumpling the note. She gathered all of the utensils and dumped them, along with the note, into the garbage. "He just will not take a hint."

"Why would he think this would get your attention?" Shinji wondered.

"Well, it's not like he would know that Chloe's idea of the proper way to make a move on someone is to walk up to them and kiss them in the bath." Kirika said.

"This coming from someone who, after having someone walk up to her and kiss her while bathing, still couldn't figure out that the girl in question liked her until it was explicitly pointed out to you." Asuka countered.

"Touché."

Everyone within earshot had to pick their jaws off the ground. Judging by the tone, Kirika's comment hadn't been a barb aimed at an enemy, it had been a teasing comment, which had been countered by Chloe's cousin just as lightly. The feud between Kirika Yumura and Chloe Langley had somehow come to an end.

Then there was the content of the jibes. By the end of the day, the entire school would know that Chloe was a lesbian with the romantic subtlety of a brick, and that Kirika was completely clueless.

"W-When did that happen?" One startled listener blurted out.

"That incident? Oh, that was practically a lifetime ago." Chloe said with a smile.

* * *

During the period breaks throughout the morning, the students of class 2-A managed to extract an explanation for what had been going on between Chloe and Kirika. Apparently the incidents (Still undescribed) which had led to the conflict between the two were ultimately caused by Chloe's frustration that her frequent and increasingly blatant attempts to get Kirika's affections were all thwarted by Kirika's stunningly impressive inability to even notice that Chloe was trying to make a pass at her. This romantic ignorance was aided by the fact that after Kirika had developed amnesia (from which she was now apparently recovering), she couldn't remember who Chloe was, let alone what previous attempts to win her affections had been made, and that (by Kirika's own admission) the girl that Kirika had been when she had been at that boarding school with Chloe couldn't have defined the word 'love' without consulting a dictionary. Ultimate resolution of the issues had come from Asuka figuring this mess out and hitting Kirika over the head with the highly obvious facts she should have seen for herself years previously. Nobody was able to figure out if this resolution also meant that the two were now in a relationship or not.

"But what was with that fork?" Hikari asked at lunchtime. "I saw you when you got that fork the other day. You looked like it was the single greatest day of your life. Then you find a mass of silverware in your locker this morning and only acted confused. What was going on with that?"

"Oh, this?" Chloe replied, producing the utensil in question. "It's an private thing between me, Kirika, and Mireille. I doubt anyone else would know the meaning of it."

"But a fork?"

"I don't suppose there's anything wrong with telling that story." Kirika said. "It was the second time I'd run into Chloe after I'd lost my memories. She'd shown up at Mireille's apartment one evening. Mireille was rather suspicious given the fact that neither of us had given Chloe our address, but since she'd been helpful the previous time we'd met, I invited her in for tea."

"While she was making the tea, Kirika grabbed a fork and hid it up her sleeve, waiting for a moment when I might let my guard down or make a threatening move." Chloe continued.

"She never did. At the end of the evening, she took my hand and pulled the fork out of my sleeve. She'd known that I was armed the entire time."

"Kirika let me keep the fork."

"And then she carried the fork around with her almost constantly for months. She stopped carrying it with her around the time that things between us got totally out of control."

Aside from the fact that Chloe apparently found nothing wrong with stalking the object of her affection, the story made the girl seem like a tragic figure. How desperate for a sign that her love was returned had Chloe been that being allowed to keep a holdout weapon was seen as a symbol of hope? How fixated had she become that something that her perceived beloved had seriously considered using to attack her with became a long-treasured possession, simply because it had been hers? And given the fact that Chloe was carrying the replacement fork around with her, that fixation hadn't died yet.

Somehow, the students of 2-A knew that the story of Chloe Langley and Kirika Yumura wasn't over just yet.

* * *

The Human Instrumentality Committee was of mixed opinions concerning the revelation about the newly discovered Nephilim.

"Les Soldats has seized control of Adam! We cannot allow this to stand!" SEELE 03 demanded.

"If something is not done, they could ruin our plans for Instrumentality! We must destroy this Nephilim at once!" SEELE 07 agreed.

"No. Should the Nephilim be slain, they could create another one, one that we cannot influence, or even know the whereabouts of. Until we find the facility in which the Nephilim was created and secure Adam, we cannot afford to destroy her." SEELE 04 objected.

"We know exactly where the Nephilim is, and can easily track her movements now that we know who she is. There is no need to rush on that end of the operation." SEELE 06 chimed in.

"Since every faction involved in the search for Les Soldats has a reason to seek out this facility, we should have no trouble finding the resources to do so." SEELE 05 mused.

"True," SEELE 02 concurred. "And since the only reason she has acted against operations of interest to us is because of her orders from Les Soldats, who she no longer serves, she is no longer a threat to us."

"Agreed." SEELE 01 said. "Depending on the means we use to bring about Instrumentality, Ms Langley could be a potential tool, an obstacle, or inconsequential. Until we have dealt with the remaining Angel, however, it is a moot point. And given the most viable method to initiate Instrumentality at this time, all we really need is for her to not interfere."

"And what of the final Angel?" SEELE 03 inquired.

"He was potentially of use to us in tracking down the so-called 'Angel Assassin'. Now that we know exactly who she is without his assistance, his usefulness has come to an end. All that remains for Nagisa is to fall to NERV like all the other Angels have. At which point we can enter the final stage of our plans."

With that pronouncement, the obelisk representations of the SEELE members flickered out one after another.

* * *

The information took a rather roundabout path, but the reports filed on the investigation into Les Soldats were eventually located by a hacker in the employ of Les Soldats and sent up his chain of command. At the top of that chain of command was Gendo Ikari, who had removed the rightful holder of that position and assumed his various virtual personae.

Reading the recent report about the meeting that had occurred after the attack of the 16th Angel, Gendo smiled. He now knew who had stolen Adam from him. Furthermore, it seemed that the Angels were of the opinion that a Nephilim created from Adam would be sufficient to trigger Third Impact. If that was the case, then his Scenario was returning to something approximating its proper shape…

"Rei?" He said.

"Yes, Commander?" Rei replied.

"I have new information for you concerning your assignment."

As Rei listened to the briefing, she realized that her new purpose dovetailed nicely with her personal objective. Her target was the same person who had killed one of her earlier bodies. The girl was also a known associate of the pilots who had betrayed another of her bodies to her death. In the case of two of the pilots, including the one who had stolen her original purpose and then further compounded her crimes by murdering all of Rei's extra bodies, that association was lifelong. Dealing with this Nephilim would be a good start at punishing those that had betrayed her...

Rei smiled.

* * *

A/N: Over the course of their campaigns, the pilots have had (via Evangelion proxy) had limbs broken, limbs severed, been exposed to lava and acid, been pummeled, been thrown, been strangled, been impaled, and been deep-fried in LCL (directly, in that case). Given all that, I find it quite likely that when they get back from their sorties, they need painkillers. _Lots_ of painkillers.

No, there is no Mireillequarium.

Jeanne D'Arc is also known to history as Joan of Arc. Given the age and purpose of Les Soldats, it's unthinkable to believe they _haven't_ had a major impact in history, both in the region in they originally started out it and elsewhere.


	27. The Light of a Black Soul

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir. The actions of any referenced historical figures in regards to Les Soldats are entirely fictitious.

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Chapter 27

The Light of a Black Soul

"I don't get it." Toji said to Kaworu, after the white-haired boy had been rebuffed by Chloe yet again. "You've known that that girl doesn't like you from practically the day that you first met. You've known that she doesn't even like boys for two weeks now. Why do you keep going after her? Why not go after some girl who might actually consider going out with you? It's getting embarrassing to watch you get shot down every single day."

"How could I possibly seek another when none of them is anywhere near as fascinating as Chloe?" Kaworu replied. "Never before have I seen a soul that shines with such a brilliant light."

The class stared at the mystical gibberish that Kaworu had just spouted. While they were wondering what in the world the boy had meant by that peculiar string of gobbledygook and whether or not Chloe should be flattered by her possession of that unspecified trait or the rest of them insulted by the implication that none of them had it in nearly as great an amount, Chloe walked over to Kaworu.

Whatever reaction Kaworu was expecting from his bizarre compliment, it wasn't what he ended up getting. Before he could say another word, his breath was taken away by a swift and brutal punch to the gut. He doubled over with a groan and collapsed to the floor. Chloe looked down at the boy as if he was some particularly disgusting species of vermin.

" _There is no light in my soul._ " She snarled before storming away.

As Kaworu gasped for breath, Kirika walked over.

"Congratulations, Nagisa," She said sardonically. "I can't think of a single think you could have said that would have offended her more."

"I-I d-don't understand." He gasped.

"That's right. You don't understand her at all. Let me help you understand one simple thing about her: If she had been holding a knife when you said that, you would be dead now. Leave her alone if you value your health."

Nobody else in the class had the slightest idea as to why Chloe had found Kaworu's comment to be insulting. As Kaworu painfully climbed back to his chair to await the next teacher, they decided it probably had something to do with her religion. Though what strange religion would find having a brilliant soul (whatever that meant) to be an abhorrent concept, none of them could hazard a guess.

* * *

"So why did you find your stalker's compliment to be so offensive?" Asuka asked her cousin as the group headed home. "I know it was weird, but there wasn't anything insulting in it."

"Asuka, if someone tried to compliment you by claiming you had some trait that would automatically disqualify you from being a pilot, how would you react?" Kirika countered.

Asuka wondered what that had to do with anything, and then it clicked. Noir were described as having black souls. By claiming that Chloe had a soul more brilliant than any others, he had described her as having a trait diametrically opposed to what Noir was supposed to be.

Kirika had pegged it: Chloe considered being Noir to be an essential part of who she was, just as Asuka did with her status as the Second Child. In an effort to hide from the pain from Chloe's apparent abandonment, her mother's… illness, and her father's infidelity, Asuka had buried herself in the one thing that made her stand out, centering her entire life around her position as the pilot of EVA-02. Chloe had similarly centered her life on her being chosen as a Sapling. Years of being raised by the very people who trained to take on the position of Noir, with her surrogate mother figure being the leader she was expected to eventually serve, she had probably gone months or possibly even years without meeting a single person who wasn't involved in guiding her to the eventual goal that Les Soldats wanted her to reach. Even after rejecting the organization that had raised her, Chloe still held on to that one part of her indoctrination (The hope that Kirika would be alongside her as the other Noir might have something to do with it). Kaworu had effectively told her that her lifelong dream was forever unattainable for her, and that everything she had gone through to achieve it had been for nothing.

When Kirika had made a comment to that effect (among other things), Asuka had had to keep Chloe from killing herself. Coming from the mouth of someone who had no apparent authority to judge over Noir, it was simply an unforgivable insult.

"I see what you mean." She said.

"At least one good thing came out of this." Chloe said.

"What would that be?" Shinji asked.

"Nagisa isn't following me today. Maybe he's finally decided to leave me alone."

* * *

Chloe was right. Kaworu might have been persistent to a degree that his classmates considered to be sheer idiocy, but he understood that he had accidentally crossed a line with Chloe that he should never have approached, even if he didn't have the slightest idea as to the nature of that line or why his comment had crossed it. Because of that unintended transgression, his pursuit of the girl had been rendered futile. Acknowledging defeat, he turned his thoughts to the task that had originally brought him to Tokyo-3: The search for Adam.

Kaworu stood at the place where his brother Armisael fought the Evangelions. Then he turned and started walking in the general direction that his brother had headed when Adam revealed himself. It was a long process. With the city not in fortress mode, what would have been a straight line journey became a winding path at least three times the length he would have traveled had he dared to use his powers and simply fly there. Unfortunately, he couldn't risk advertising his presence to NERV until he knew where Adam was. There was nobody left to follow in his footsteps should he fall, and therefore he had to succeed.

It took three hours, but Kaworu eventually reached the place that Armisael landed when he fell from the sky. An additional hour and a half took him to the place where his brother finally died. Further travel in that direction took him to the outskirts of the city, the area which Armisael had presumably been trying to reach. Hours of fruitless searching revealed no trace of his father, only the access point of one of the emergency shelters.

As Kaworu caught the last subway train back to his residence, he decided that the only way that Adam could have suddenly appeared and then just as suddenly disappeared during the battle was if somebody in NERV had brought him out through that shelter entrance and then returned him to that shelter, and from there wherever he was kept locked away once the battle ended. That meant that Adam was hidden within the GeoFront beneath the city.

Unfortunately, getting into the GeoFront wasn't a simple task. Every entrance was known to NERV and carefully guarded. Even the shelters could not be accessed by civilians from the surface except when a state of emergency was declared. Had he known of Adam's location earlier, the solution would have been obvious: He would have waited for one of his brethren to arrive, enter the GeoFront through a shelter, and then leave the shelter and search for Adam. Unfortunately, there was no was no one to start such an emergency other than himself. And as the only one of his kind capable of being in two places at the same time was his deceased sibling Israfel, he could either create the diversion or search the GeoFront, but not both.

The next possibility was to enter the GeoFront through the massive breach that Zeruel had created. Months after his demise, that breach still existed. However, that effort could prove to be too risky. The breach might still be around, but that wasn't because of any incompetence on the part of NERV. They had people working on that breach at all hours. It had literally taken them the better part of a month just to get the scaffolding in place to even attempt to repair the breach, and the sheer size of it, combined with the cost of the materials, made actual repairs a very time consuming process. There was no way he would get to the breach without being noticed, and there was also no way to exploit the breach without flying, which would announce his presence as the final Messenger to NERV before he was ready to move. That option was out as well.

Judging by what had happened to his classmate Kensuke, it was possible to be 'invited' into the GeoFront by annoying Section 2 sufficiently. That was semi-viable, but not exactly ideal. He didn't have the skills needed to get himself arrested for the same reason that Kensuke did, and he didn't know what else he could do that would get him considered dangerous enough to lock up but not dangerous enough to shoot out of hand. In addition, he would be watched continuously in such a method, which interfered with his need to search the underground facilities. He also didn't care for the idea of being locked into the brig for a week to keep up his façade as a common Lilim until he was ready to act.

The next possibility was that he could use his contacts within SEELE to get one of the local agents to smuggle him in. That plan made sense to him. Many NERV employees drove to work, and apparently had their vehicles transported from the surface to the GeoFront and back at shift change. If he could get himself concealed within one of those cars, he would be taken straight to the general area he needed to start his search in, with none of his adversaries the wiser.

Kaworu resolved to contact a local SEELE operative about hiding in the trunk of his car the next day.

* * *

Concealed within the trunk of the SEELE operative's car, Kaworu managed to enter the GeoFront without much trouble. After waiting an hour to reduce the odds that there would be somebody in the parking garage to see him emerge from the trunk, he slipped out and proceeded into the GeoFront.

The winding, maze-like corridors of the complex known as Central Dogma were enough to confuse anyone not familiar with their layout, but Kaworu had an advantage that most newcomers did not have. He could sense the presence of beings with discrete AT Fields, and as such knew the exact location of the places he wanted to go, even if he didn't know the shortest path to get there.

There were only two places inside the GeoFront that were of any interest to him. One of them was deep below ground, even when considering Central Dogma to be 'above ground', and the other was not. Kaworu decided to go after the second area first.

It took him some time to find the correct path, but with his innate ability to tell when he was getting closer to his goal, he eventually made his way to his destination. There he found a set of hangers where the false child of Lilith and the two false children of Adam rested, waiting for their next battle with Adam's true children.

This was not what Kaworu had been looking for. But looking at the wall, he noticed a lift sized to fit the Evangelions. Something about the lift gave him the impression that he was not at the lowest level it could go to. If that was the case, then he could use it to approach the place where his father had to be resting. And since an EVA sized lift had to have EVA sized corridors leading up to it on all floors, that meant that he could take the perfect weapon to counter any efforts NERV could make to stop him along.

Looking at the sky-blue form of EVA-00, Tabris reached out with the light of his soul and took control of mankind's ultimate weapon.

* * *

The pilots were in their locker rooms. They had taken the day off from school to participate in yet another set of synchronization tests, trading hours of dull lectures on Second Impact for hours of sitting in an overgrown tin can filled with orange goop that smelled of blood in the hopes of preventing a Third. Having just finished their tests, the Children were looking forward to being able to get out of the plug suits and showering the LCL off of their bodies.

Their hopes of being able to stop smelling like blood for a time were dashed by the scramble alarm. The pilots promptly turned around and ran back to the hanger bay. There they were greeted by the absence of EVA-00.

"Was die Holle?" Asuka yelled. "Where's Unit 00?"

Acting Commander Fuyutsuki's voice came over the intercom. "Pilots, the 17th Angel has appeared inside Central Dogma. It has somehow hijacked Unit 00 and is attempting to breach Terminal Dogma. We're not sure how. As far as we can tell, there isn't even an entry plug in place, let alone a pilot. Shinji, Asuka, you are to intercept and destroy the Angel immediately."

The two named pilots ran to their entry plugs. Kirika, left without an Evangelion to pilot, headed for the bridge. She didn't like not being in a battle without being able to fight, but being in a battle without even knowing what was going on was worse.

* * *

Tabris floated down the empty shaft, his stolen war machine following close behind. He could feel the power of the AT Field trapped deep within the bowels of the underground fortress calling to him. Soon he would be reunited with his father. Soon his mission would be complete.

At the bottom of the shaft, he found a pair of enormous sealed doors blocking his path. While they might have been useful at stopping a conventional force, they stood no chance at stopping the brute strength of an Evangelion prying them apart. Smiling, Tabris floated into the room where his destiny laid waiting for him.

He heard two metallic crashes behind him. NERV had noticed his presence and sent the remaining Evangelions after him. No matter. He sent EVA-00 to delay them while he travelled further into the sealed chamber.

Within the chamber, Tabris saw a literal lake of blood, above which was suspended the crucified form of a captive Messenger. As he saw the oozing wounds were spikes affixed the Messenger to the cross, Tabris realized that all of the blood in the lake had come from those wounds. The Lilim had _dared_ to treat his father so?

But even through the anger he felt as he gazed upon the Messenger's form, something felt wrong. As he approached it, he realized what it was.

"T-This isn't Adam." He gasped. "This is Lilith!"

But if Adam wasn't held by NERV, where was he? He knew that Adam was somewhere in Tokyo-3, but where? The only place he had found discrete AT Fields outside of NERV was…

And with that thought, Kaworu knew exactly where his Father was hidden.

* * *

The bridge crew watched in silence as their remaining Evangelions were lowered into Terminal Dogma. They watched as Asuka engaged the hijacked EVA-00 in close combat, allowing Shinji to run past in pursuit of the Angel. The silence continued until EVA-01 got close enough to the Angel to make out its form.

"The Angel's a kid?" Shigeru wondered.

Kirika looked at the image on the screen. " _Nagisa?_ " She gasped.

"You know him?" Fuyutsuki asked.

"His name's Kaworu Nagisa. He's in my class at school."

Fuyutsuki mentally noted to have intelligence backtrack the history of this boy once he was dealt with. They had had an Angel concealed as a human in the city, in regular contact with the pilots and the key to Third Impact for an indefinite period of time and nobody had noticed. They needed to know where he had come from and how he had come up with an identity that allowed him to do so in order to prevent a repeat performance. They also needed to figure out how he had gotten into the GeoFront in the first place.

"Of course." Kaworu's voice rang out over the speakers. "How could I have been so foolish? _She_ has Adam."

With that, Kaworu flew out of the reach of the grasping EVA-01 and flew back out the door. A somewhat battered but still functioning EVA-00 flew after him, knocking EVA-02 over in the process.

Looks were exchanged across the bridge.

"Well, the secret's out." Hyuga said.

"What's the battery status on EVA-02?" Misato asked.

"Two minutes remaining."

"That's not enough time. Shinji, your Eva has an independent power source. Get in the elevator and up to the surface. We need you to get to Chloe before the Angel does. Aoba, sound an alert. Get everyone off the streets. We're going to have an Eva running down them in a few minutes and I don't want anyone getting stepped on."

"Right." Two voices responded.

"Should we be getting people to the shelters?" Hyuga asked.

"It wouldn't do much good. The Angel knows exactly where he's going, so crowding more people around his target would only get more people killed."

"Crank the conveyors up to maximum speed and open access point 521." Kirika cut in.

"What?"

"I'm going after Nagisa. I might be able to pin him down long enough for the Evas to arrive and deal with him." Before anyone could object, the girl left in a dash.

Misato remembered seeing Kirika's first simulated battles. Back then, she had thought that if they ever encountered an Angel that could be fought on foot, the Fourth Child would be able to handle it without any problems. It was apparently time to test that theory.

"Do it." Misato ordered. "Then get me a phone line to Tokyo-3 Municipal Junior High. I need to get the principal to understand that an Angel is heading straight for his school, and that he needs to get his human students out of the line of fire. And have Section 2 send a car there to evacuate Chloe. The last thing we need is an Angel battle inside a crowded school."

* * *

There were two possible definitions to the term 'maximum speed'. There was the maximum _safe_ speed, which was the greatest speed the conveyors could take where there was no risk of injuring the people using them so long as the practiced proper care, and then there was the actual maximum speed, which was the greatest speed they were physically capable of going. The bridge crew had taken the literal meaning of the term 'maximum'. Kirika hit the conveyor belt at a run and kept on going, not slowing until she reached the escalators, where she had to stop for fear of breaking an ankle on the moving slope. The moment she reached the surface, she started running again, sprinting through the open entrance and yanking the machine gun held by the Section 2 guard at the entry point out of his hands as she passed him.

Access point 521was the closest access point to the school. Even any advantage of speed Nagisa might have with his ability to fly, he still had to leave Central Dogma, make his way to the breach in the armor, fly to the surface from there, and then head to his destination. Kirika had a considerably shorter distance to travel.

Her oldest friend was in danger. Kirika might not have truly understood what friendship meant until meeting Mireille, but that didn't change the fact that she and Chloe had known each other virtually their entire lives (Almost literally so in Chloe's case, given that the current Chloe was technically less than a year old). Had the person Kirika had been in her True Noir persona not been almost totally incapable of recognizing bonds between people, let alone forming them, she probably would have grown up thinking of the other Sapling as a sister.

Kirika had lost Chloe once because she hadn't realized how important she was to Chloe before she had done something that made Chloe think that she had been completely rejected. She had no intention of losing her friend again.

It would have been nice to have Mireille by her side in this fight, but she had been called on to help with a raid on a suspected Soldat safehouse. She ran on, racing to beat Nagisa to his goal.

* * *

Chloe was sitting in class, waiting for the bell to ring. Her friends were all working at NERV today, so there wasn't anything of interest at school today. On the other hand, Nagisa wasn't in school either, so one of the continual downsides of school had gone away for a little while.

As the history teacher lectured about the Meiji Restoration (A welcome change – hearing about events 150 years in the past was far preferable from hearing about the events of the previous 15 years for the umpteenth time), Chloe amused herself by comparing the official version of those events against what had been recorded in the Soldat archives of how they had changed the shape of the world. The description of the early years of that period were fairly accurate, so long as one honestly believed that the acts of the Western merchants that devastated the Japanese economy were caused by a large number of individual speculators rather than an orchestrated attack, and that the selection of a large number of officials to the foreign consulates in Japan who would be willing to resort to armed force in response to anti-foreigner incidents were due to chance rather than design.

The first real inaccuracy came when the topic of the Shinsengumi came up. Chloe idly wondered how Kensuke (who had been released by Section 2 the week before) would react if she let the class know that the greatest feat of the Shinsengumi was not their preventing the razing of Kyoto in the Ikedaya Incident in 1864, but the death of Noir at the hands of Hajime Saito a year later. Not only did the man slow the advance of Les Soldats into Japan for an additional thirty years (As the agents of the time all took excessive care to avoid the notice of the only person to _ever_ defeat an entire Noir team single-handedly, for fear of sharing their fate), but the implications of his victory had shaken the power structure of Les Soldats in ways that were still felt more than a hundred years after his death.

Creating Noir was a very expensive process in both time and manpower (with the manpower often ending up dead), and the loss of Noir brought with it the loss of all the resources used to train and test them. Les Soldats could literally not afford the expense to replace Noir more often than once a generation. That one man could destroy Noir and remain in good enough condition to continue his duties cast a poor light on the High Priestess who had selected and trained that generation of Noir. Other factions within Les Soldats were able to use that leverage to begin to wrest power away from the priestesses, beginning the corruption which had brought Les Soldats to the state it was in now. It wouldn't be until Altena's ascension that a High Priestess would regain enough power to even attempt to create a new Noir.

When she had first heard that story from Altena as a child, she had hated Saito for what he had done instead of simply dying like he was supposed to. From her current perspective, Chloe found the man's position to be more sympathetic. Saito had probably never even heard of Les Soldats. He was simply doing his job as part of an elite police force. He had found that men in his unit had been subverted by an outside agency, and he eliminated them. Later on, two women tried to kill him, and he defended himself. Had she been in his sandals at the time, she likely would have done the same thing. Actually, thinking of her actions starting from when she learned that Les Soldats had been corrupted beyond redemption, she had done almost exactly the same thing.

Before Chloe could start taking apart the next statement the teacher made, Chloe felt the semi-familiar and highly unwelcome sensation of a large AT Field.

* * *

The class turned to stare as Chloe jumped out of her seat.

"Is something the matter, Miss Langley?" The teacher asked.

"There's an Angel coming." She said. "You need to get out of here, now."

"Don't be ridiculous, Miss Langley, if there was an Angel coming, we would have heard the alarms going off by…" The teacher stopped and gaped as she saw EVA-00 flying towards the school. The class watched through the window as the flying war machine approached the school with a floating boy standing in front of it. Chloe recognized the boy immediately.

"Nagisa." She spat.

EVA-00 dropped to the ground, landing with a crash onto a car filled with Section 2 agents, smashing it flat. Kaworu floated closer to the school, and then smiled slightly. A translucent hexagonal barrier appeared in the air, and then rushed forward, smashing into the windows. The students screamed as shards of broken glass flew through the air, slicing into anyone in their path. But there was one area completely clear of glass. A second field had appeared in front of Chloe, stopping all the glass coming at her and those behind her.

"You may denounce the light of your soul with your words, Chloe, but you seem to have no problem with calling upon it." Kaworu said.

Kaworu drifted into the class, ignoring all the people he had injured.

"I know that you hold Adam, Chloe." He continued. "It is time that we became one."

Before he could come any closer, the door was kicked open by Kirika, who raised her machine gun and emptied the magazine at the Angel. Once she was out of bullets, she threw the empty weapon at him. The distraction she provided allowed the students time to make their way to the side of the room, out of the immediate line of fire. Kaworu sent his AT Field at Kirika, shattering several desks in its path. Kirika rolled out of the way, and then scrambled to her feet, grabbing two pieces of a ruined desk and holding them like disproportioned tonfa.

Under ordinary circumstances, the sight of one of their female classmates engaging in a martial arts duel while wearing a skintight black bodysuit would be something most of the boys would cheerfully pay money to watch. This was not an ordinary circumstance. The students (With the exception of Kensuke, who was recording everything, oblivious to the personal danger involved) all started creeping to the door.

"Do you think you can best me with such toys, Lilim?" Kaworu asked. "You forget what I control."

The enormous form of EVA-00 stomped closer to the school. It raised its arm to smash into the school, a blow that could kill everyone in the room, along with everyone in the adjacent rooms and on the adjacent floors in that area of the building. Then the sound of a pair of enormous feet crashing into the earth came rushing towards them. EVA-01 had arrived, knocking Unit 00 away from the school.

Taking advantage of the distraction, Kirika took the offensive, one makeshift nightstick striking for Kaworu's head, the other sweeping around to knock his legs out from under him. The higher blow bounced of an AT Field, but the other landed, knocking him to the ground. The follow up blows both struck Kaworu's AT Field as he levitated off the floor and returned to his feet. Undeterred, Kirika continued to attack until her weapons started to crack and break from continual impacts with the AT Field.

Looking around, Kirika ran to a lamp and yanked out the extension cord. Turning around, she leapt over Kaworu and out the window. Kaworu smirked at the apparent retreat, right before a noose made of insulated wire looped around his neck and he fell backwards, pulled out of the window by the weight of the girl at the other end of the cord. As he struggled to regain his breath, the remaining students in the class took advantage of the lull in the battle to get out of the room, carrying their injured classmates with them.

* * *

Shinji faced off against EVA-00. This was the second time that he had to fight another Evangelion in a serious battle. This time, however, he didn't have to worry about harming a colleague. There was nobody piloting the Eva, Kaworu was somehow controlling it by remote. There was nothing to cause him to hesitate as he initially did when facing the 13th Angel. An additional advantage he had was that Kaworu apparently hadn't had much in the way of combat training, which Shinji had, even if he wasn't at Asuka's level, let alone Kirika's.

Shinji wasn't entirely certain about his feelings for Chloe. When she first arrived in Tokyo-3, he had first seen her as a connection to his sister, who had been rather distant to him at the time, and a clue to her mysterious past. Over time, he started to see her as a person in her own right. He hadn't actually thought of her in any kind of romantic context until he had inadvertently relived her previous incarnation's final attempt to win his sister's heart from his sister's perspective (Something that Asuka took far too much pleasure in teasing him about). But even if he didn't know what Chloe meant to him on a personal level, he did know what she was to him on a professional level: The person he had been ordered to protect at all cost, on pain of global armageddon. And he wasn't about to fail that duty.

A particularly brutal combination of attacks knocked EVA-00 to the street. To Shinji's surprise, it returned to its feet immediately. Shinji realized that Kaworu had one advantage on his side as well: Since he wasn't actually synchronized with Unit 00, he wasn't feeling its pain. That meant he could cause the Eva to ignore the damage done to it and keep coming at him so long as it was intact.

This fight would be tougher than he thought.

* * *

Kensuke Aida was perched at the ruined window of his classroom, watching the battle through his camcorder. This was so cool! He was actually seeing an Angel fight in person! He wasn't watching from a distance or through a computer like the previous times, he was less than a hundred meters away and could make out every detail. And to top it off, he was watching a pilot fight the Angel without an Evangelion.

He watched as Kirika launched a flying kick at Kaworu. The kick struck his AT Field. Kirika then braced herself against the field and kicked off, bouncing off of Kaworu in a graceful back flip. Landing in a crouch, she scrambled to her feet and darted forward, seeking another angle to attack from.

Kensuke stared avidly, thinking that this battle was even more impressive than the one that had gotten him into so much trouble with Section 2. He was so intent at watching the fight that he overbalanced and fell out of the hole where a window had been a few minutes previously. Fortunately, the shrubberies lining the school wall broke his three story fall.

* * *

Kirika looked around for her next weapon. Nagisa had snapped her noose shortly after she had pulled him out of the school, and she didn't have anything else substantial enough to do serious damage at hand. The amazing thing was that her attempt at hanging him almost worked. It had taken him several precious seconds to form an AT Field inside the tightening cord and force it open. Kirika had thought there was a good chance that she'd only snare an AT Field to being with when she had attempted the maneuver. It was as if his AT Field wasn't always up for some reason.

A possibility occurred to Kirika. Between fighting Shinji by proxy and fighting her in person, Nagisa was being forced to focus on two battles at once. Perhaps the need for two-way initiative was diverting some of the mental focus he needed to maintain the AT Field. Kirika had gone through years of training on how to keep track of a battle against multiple opponents; most other people hadn't.

If that was the case, then she had a chance. If she happened to launch an attack when he was focusing on stopping EVA-01, she could take him out. If Shinji launched an attack when he was focusing on her, then her brother could disable the rogue Evangelion and come over to deal with the Angel. And if neither of them got that opening, they still had a good chance of keeping him occupied on two fronts long enough for Asuka to get EVA-02 recharged and to the surface, after which she could deal with the Angel.

As she searched for a new weapon, Kirika spotted something that would help her keep the Angel occupied for a time. She launched a new series of attacks, carefully herding Nagisa to the area she needed him to be. Once he was in position, she flipped over him and backed away, hoping to goad him to try to strike her with his AT Field again. She was not disappointed. She just managed to roll out of the way as the barrier rushed forward, crashing into the object that was behind her.

Kirika gave a triumphant smile as the damaged telephone pole fell in the direction in which it had been struck, landing on top of Kaworu Nagisa.

* * *

The students were gathered in the gymnasium, huddling in terror. Witnessing a battle first hand was nowhere near as exhilarating as watching one on a screen. Many of the students were moaning in pain from shrapnel wounds gained from the destruction wreaked by Kaworu's entrance. The class representative was one of the wounded. Looking down on the girl he had carried out of the wrecked classroom, Toji reached for a particularly ugly shard of glass embedded in her side.

"Don't." Chloe interjected.

"What?" Toji asked.

"That piece of glass is the only thing holding that wound together. If you pull it out, she'll start bleeding uncontrollably. Leave it in place until the paramedics arrive. Just have her lie still. Moving around will just make her injuries worse."

Toji looked at the other girl. On any other day, the revelations of this day would trigger a new cycle in the rumor mill. Kaworu was an Angel. Chloe had super powers. Said powers were the reason that Kaworu had made his highly unwelcome courtship and then attacked the school. And the only reason that Chloe's unwelcome suitor hadn't seized her was because the person she wanted to be courting her had showed up and was now trying to beat the Angel to death with broken pieces of the classroom's furniture. But today felt more like a scene from a rather gory war movie than the soap opera feel of the previous incidents surrounding the pilots and their close associates. Right now the main thing going through Toji's mind about Chloe was that half the class was seriously hurt and that it was because of her.

"What would you know? She wouldn't be hurt at all if it wasn't for you!"

"You're right." Chloe sighed. "I knew something was odd about Nagisa from the day he showed up. But I never did anything about it because he never did more than act as a constant nuisance. Killing people for purely personal reasons is highly unprofessional. Had I acted on my instincts and eliminated him earlier, this day would not have happened.

"It's time I corrected that mistake."

Chloe removed her vest and tossed it aside. Beneath it was an odd harness of black leather across her lower back, which was studded with pieces of grey metal. She pulled one of them out, revealing it to be a knife, and slit her skirt in the front and back for greater freedom of movement. Then she strode away, leaving behind students gaping at the announcement that the only reason she hadn't _killed_ her unwelcome suitor weeks before was due to professional ethics (Though of what profession, they didn't know), and that said ethics were no longer protecting the Angel.

Said students were suddenly very glad that none of them had ever tried hitting on the girl.

* * *

Between having ten meters of wooden post landing on him and getting tangled with the broken power cords, Nagisa had not taken Kirika's trap well. Had he been a fraction of a second slower in bringing his AT Field up, he would have ended up either flattened or cooked. He had effectively thrown the pole back at her once he managed to pry it off of himself. This was followed by several attempts to smash her against something with his AT Field.

As Kirika was slowly backed into a corner by the sudden offensive, a third party entered the battle. A throwing knife flew through the air, embedding itself in the Angel's AT Field.

"Get away from my partner, Nagisa." Chloe demanded.

"Chloe, get out of here!" Kirika called out. "You're the one he's after!"

"There's no way I'm letting you go into this fight alone. Remember, your fate is tied to mine by a thread as black as death."

Kirika smiled as she picked up a length of piping broken off of a wrecked bicycle rack. "Indeed, Death itself wasn't enough to sever it. Alright, let's go, old friend." Kirika moved to interpose herself between Chloe and Nagisa, swinging her improvised quarterstaff as she did so.

The two fought in perfect unison. However dismal Kirika might have been at understanding Chloe at an emotional level, when it came to combat, the two knew each other so well that they didn't need to consciously think about what the other would do next. Kirika knew exactly when and where Chloe would throw her next knife, and moved out of the way just enough for the blade to pass before resuming her blocking movements, striking at any point Nagisa left exposed the whole time.

As the battle raged, Kirika noticed that Chloe's knives were partially penetrating the AT Field. Taking a chance, on the next knife, she swung her staff not at the Angel, but at the hilt of the knife, driving it further into the AT Field. The knife pierced the barrier far enough to actually injure its target, causing Nagisa to cry out in pain and rage. The Angel pushed out with his barrier again, this time at an angle. Kirika was caught in the attack and was thrown aside, her staff falling from her hand. Fortunately the blow was only strong enough to knock her away instead of smash her into the wall of the school.

As she climbed painfully to her feet, Kirika desperately looked around for a new weapon. Nagisa had cleared her from his path, and now he was attacking Chloe, AT Field struggling against AT Field for dominance. She was running out of time. If he won that struggle, the world would end. But with all his attention on that struggle, he might not be able to defend himself from an attack from a different angle. She needed to make one last strike, and she needed to make it count.

Seeing Kensuke filming the battle from the bushes she had landed in, she reached out and grabbed his glasses off of his face. She sprinted towards the Angel, pilfered glasses in hand. Two swift snaps and the ear hooks were broken off and the frame discarded. She came up behind Nagisa, one hook in each hand, and forced them into his ears, piercing the eardrums and driving into his brain.

The Angel of Free Will barely had the time to cry out once before his brains were scrambled by a crude and lethal lobotomy.

* * *

The battle was over. Ambulances came and took the injured students to the hospital, while work crews arrived to evaluating the damage done to the building. The school would be shut down until repairs were completed. A medical team came from NERV and collected Kaworu's corpse. He was the single most intact Angel specimen they had ever managed to secure, and of a size that could be easily examined, and they planned to perform a full autopsy.

There was a great deal of complaints about NERV's handling of the battle. They ignored the fact that trying to get the population to the shelters at the same time that Evangelions were on the surface would only cause them to be (literally) underfoot. They also ignored the fact that having a person who was effectively Angel bait around wasn't that significant when you considered the fact that the entire city was ultimately Angel bait – a detail that had been public knowledge for nearly a year.

EVA-00 was carted back to the GeoFront. Thanks to Kaworu's total disregard of the damage inflicted on his puppet, Shinji had been forced to inflict a massive amount of damage in his efforts to subdue it. A thorough assessment would be needed in order to figure out whether or not repairing the damage would even be feasible.

As the cleanup effort commenced, everyone at NERV heaved a sigh of relief that the Angel had been stopped. This one had gotten much too close to success for comfort. It was the first time since the 11th Angel that the Angels had attempted anything resembling subtlety, and they hadn't recognized the threat until it was almost too late. They wondered if the next Angel would attack in a similar way.

They had no way of knowing that the attack of the 18th and final Angel would be anything _but_ subtle.

* * *

OMAKE: The Mireillequarium (suggested by gunman and James Axelrad):

The group in the laboratory watched as the horde of Reis dissolved in the tank and Ritsuko laughed hysterically. One of the observers shifted nervously at the unsettling image and hit a switch on a control panel by accident. This caused a concealed doorway to open in the wall. Walking through the door, the group discovered a second lab, similar to the first, but instead of a tank full of Reis, this room contained a tank full of Mireilles.

They gathering stared at the tank, wondering why Gendo had felt the need to mass-produce copies of a Section 2 bodyguard. Then Kirika noticed the expression on Kaji's face as he stared at the naked figures of several dozen Mireilles.

Kaji was smacked by virtually every female in the room. As he moaned on the floor, Kirika disposed of the copies of her partner.

* * *

OMAKE: The Black Hands and their Fanboy (Inspired by gunman):

Kirika and Chloe looked upon the fallen body of Kaworu Nagisa.

"Thanks for the help, Chloe." Kirika said.

"How could I not help? Noir is a name meant for two, after all." She replied.

Unfortunately, Chloe hadn't noticed that Kensuke had been watching the entire fight, and had heard that last statement.

"Oh my god… You two are Noir?" He gasped.

"This is cool! I actually got to see Noir in action! And to think they used my glasses to take out the Angel! I'm going to mount these glasses on my wall!" He gushed.

The two assassins looked at each other silently as their groupie continued to go on and on. It was clear that trying to get the boy to understand the concept of discretion was a futile effort. By the time he got around to asking for their autograph, they had agreed to a plan of action without any need for words.

The authorities would later find Kensuke's body hidden behind the bushes, a piece of paper with the word "Noir" scribbled on it in his hand.

* * *

A/N: I've been looking forward to this fight for two years now. I hope you all enjoyed it.

I think it's likely that Asuka found her way to her canon mindset on her own, seeing as the events that brought her to that point could only be partially orchestrated by an outside party (Unless somebody could predict the nature of Kyoko's madness and her suicide was actually a murder – the latter being scarily possible). Once she got there, however, there were undoubtedly subtle actions on the part of SEELE to make sure she stayed there.

The only kill Chloe has ever done in canon that could be considered purely personal was the death of Conrad Zellner in episode 12. Every other kill she made or attempted that could be considered personal could be justified professionally, even if her ultimate reason for the act was personal.


	28. You Will (Not) Survive

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By bissek

Chapter 28

You Will (Not) Survive

Gendo looked over the most recent report. The 17th Angel had been defeated. With the final Angel disposed of, the final stage of his scenario could commence. All he needed to do in order to be reunited with his beloved Yui was to trigger a Third Impact using Rei and the Nephilim that carried Adam.

The single greatest threat to his plans remaining was the Nephilim he had to capture in order to initiate Third Impact. Looking over the files in Aoki's computer, Gendo had learned that Chloe Langley was far more than just the very young Soldat agent he had her to be from Rei's initial report – as was his daughter. Looking back on the events following the 15th Angel's attack, he now could hardly believe that he had been so foolhardy as to try to bully Noir. He was lucky to be alive.

Gendo knew better to think that he could best one Noir, let alone the three that were arrayed against him. Even if he could just reduce the fight to Rei vs Chloe, it would still be a contest to see if Rei's greater experience with her AT Field could counter Chloe's considerably greater experience in combat. If he wanted to win that fight, he needed to find an edge.

And an edge he had found. Noir might be more than a match for any individual he could find on short notice, probably any twenty individuals. But any fifty? Any hundred? Any five hundred? Any thousand? No matter how good they were as individuals, or how well they functioned as a team, they were still human (or approximately human in the case of Chloe). They were still susceptible to fatigue. Wear them down with enough cannon fodder, and they would become tired enough to be vulnerable.

Fortunately, Gendo managed to use the Soldat contacts he had retained to acquire an appropriate supply of shock troops. The effort he had spent to keep those contacts within the Diet and the JSSDF secure had caused many of the other Soldat contacts he knew of to desert, but they were no longer necessary.

Gendo started drafting the orders that would force Noir to fight their way through his chosen patsies so that Rei could capture Chloe and complete his scenario.

* * *

The Human Instrumentality Committee was also conferring about the demise of the 17th Angel. They too knew that they could commence the final stage of their plans now that Nagisa had been slain. But unlike the former leader of NERV, they were unconcerned about the apparently formidable skills of the Nephilim and her associates. Their plan to initiate Instrumentality hinged upon gaining access to a creation of Lilith, not Adam.

With their goal of seizing Lilith and using her with their MP EVA units, they needed to either capture Terminal Dogma or EVA-01. In order to do that, they needed to either take NERV HQ or force the Evangelions to leave their based in order to be captured. Since there were no longer any Angels to justify an Evangelion deployment, they would need to use more conventional troops to achieve either objective.

Some unexpected shuffling of members between committees within the Diet had hampered their ability to influence Japanese policy in regards to NERV, but that didn't really matter. Their foothold within the UN Security Council was still secure, and as NERV was technically a UN organization, they could easily create a plausible pretext for invading NERV that would hold up long enough for them to start Third Impact. After that point, it didn't really matter what happened.

* * *

In a way, the pilots were glad that the school had been closed for repairs. With the school shut down, they didn't have to face the inevitable awkward questions about Chloe's AT Field, Kirika's duel with the 17th Angel in the school parking lot, and of course the question of what kind of bizarre boarding school did those two go to and how much were their relatives aware of it. More importantly than that, it allowed them to not have to see exactly how many of their classmates had been hospitalized after the battle. The hospital had yet to release the injured students and the pilots weren't looking forward to trying to explain things to them, either. None of the students had died, but many of them had received injuries whose consequences would stay with them for the rest of their lives, and all of them would have permanent scars.

NERV had decided that it was best to keep the pilots working so that they wouldn't have time to dwell on what had happened. They kept the Children engaged in simulated battles for hours every day, despite the fact that the engineers were still arguing over whether it would be worth it to repair EVA-00, or to just scrap it and try to pry one of the MP Evas from the one of the other branches and hope that Kirika could use it in Unit 00's place.

This continued for five days when Mireille received a message from Kaji reporting that he had just gotten a solid lead on the whereabouts of Hayate Aoki, one of the key Soldat leaders that they had been searching for. Realizing that they would be of far more use helping to fight through whatever security he had in place in his hideout, all three members of Noir left for Hokkaido.

The pilots who remained in Tokyo-3 continued with their training. A few hours later, the exercises were temporarily halted for lunch. Shinji headed off to the cafeteria. Asuka remained in the hanger area to work on some extra hand-to-hand training with some specialists from Section 2.

Fifteen minutes later, everything went to hell.

* * *

The safehouse was quiet. In Kaji's eyes, a little too quiet. There was absolutely no activity there whatsoever. After half an hour of watching the building, Kaji half suspected that this was some kind of trap. Steeling himself for a nasty surprise, he ordered the attack, making sure to order that his bomb specialists come in and sweep each room the moment the shooters declared it clear. His caution proved to be unnecessary. Not only were there no bombs, there were no enemies. The place was deserted.

Had Aoki been tipped off and fled? As the investigative team started searching for clues as to where he had run to and examined the computer for files of interest, the bomb squad started sweeping and opening up closets, cabinets, and other areas that they had left untouched during the initial assault. Noting one closet that water trickling out from under it for some reason, they were especially careful in checking that door before opening it. There was no trap in the room, but opening the door quickly revealed the source of the water.

The body of Hayate Aoki had been frozen solid at some point after his death, and then moved from wherever he had been stored and propped inside the closet door sometime earlier that day. There was no way to tell precisely how long he had been frozen, but given how completely he had frozen, it had obviously been quite some time ago.

"He's already dead." Kaji noted rhetorically. "But who killed him?"

"I think I can guess." Mireille stated, holding up something she had found on a chair – a single strand of blue hair.

"Ayanami?"

"Either her or Gendo. They were definitely here at some point."

"The body hasn't been in this closet for very long. Someone must have put it here this morning. Someone, probably Gendo, wanted us to come here and find this body. But why?"

* * *

Two armies closed on Tokyo-3, one a force of UN troops sent by SEELE, the other a force of JSSDF troops sent by a renegade of Les Soldats.

The UN troops struck near the breach formed by the 14th Angel's attack. They quickly killed all of the workers laboring at repairing the breach and used shaped charges to widen the slowly narrowing gap. They also seized several of the access points in the area. With those secured, they started shuttling men in through the access junctions and arranged to have equipment airlifted by helicopter down the breach.

The JSSDF troops struck in another section of the city, seizing several access points and one of the train cars. These they used to shuttle their own troops and equipment into the GeoFront.

But neither army was quite prepared from the aftereffects of the various humiliations suffered by Section 2, which had culminated with the death of their leader at the hands of the second deadliest killer in the world. While the retrained guards could not possibly hope to stop the attackers that outnumbered them so hopelessly, they had become good enough to hold them back long enough to sound the alarm.

* * *

"What's going on?" Fuyutsuki demanded.

"We're under attack from units of the JSSDF and the UNCMF!" Hyuga reported. "Both are claiming that we have disregarded orders to stand down and transfer control over NERV to a new commander."

"When did we get orders to stand down?" Last he had checked the UN had yet to decide who the next commander of NERV would be, let alone set a date for the transfer of command.

"I don't know, sir! And the claims don't agree on who the new commander is supposed to be, either."

Just then, his console pinged. He looked down and saw that he had just received two emails, one from the Diet and one from the UN. Both stated that he was to turn over the command of NERV to a person specified in the email immediately. They were time stamped less than five minutes previously.

Looking at the messages, Fuyutsuki knew that this had all been pre-arranged. Transfers of command didn't work like that. In most cases, the orders were sent well in advance so that the old commander could arrange a proper briefing to the new commander and the new commander could prepare for his new post. Even in cases where this did not apply, one would not consider the old commander to be rebelling against proper authority by not turning over command until some point after it was certain that he had received the orders. Usually the government would make certain that the orders were sent in a manner that would get the attention of the outgoing commander to make certain they were read promptly. Sending the orders as a routine email, which might not be seen or read for hours, wasn't such a manner.

Fuyutsuki had no doubt that the first shot of each force had not been fired until after those messages had been sent. That would give the people who ordered the attack a paper-thin fig leaf of legality to cover the fact that they had absolutely no intention of taking NERV by any method other than force. The thought that he might be seeking to use the Evangelions for some nefarious purpose and refused to turn over command that the official messages were sending out would slow the hands of those who could restrain the attacking forces. It might even keep people from remembering that as a UN organization, the Diet had no authority to issue orders to NERV in the first place.

It wouldn't hold forever, but it might hold long enough for the invaders to seize control of Central Dogma. And if SEELE was behind this, that might be all they needed. The only real question was why there were two armies. Given the messages, it seemed that two groups were trying to invade NERV instead of one. If one was sent by SEELE, who had sent the other?

"Battle stations." He ordered.

* * *

The investigative team had finished examining the computer. They now had contact information for hundreds of members of Les Soldats. They noted that the bulk of the Soldat agents that the organization had been trying to hold onto in Japan were all within the Diet or the JSSDF.

"But why?" Kaji mused. Just then, a radio operator ran into the room.

"Sir, a battalion from the 3rd JSSDF Division has attacked NERV!" he said.

" _What?_ Why?"

"It's apparently because Subcommander Fuyutsuki refused to turn command over to the JSSDF."

"But the Diet doesn't have the authority to order Fuyutsuki to do anything. He answers to the UN Security Council, not the Diet. Why would they order such a… sweet kami, that's it!"

Gendo had been the person here controlling things after Aoki died. He had cast aside those members of Les Soldats that were of no use to him to maintain his grip on those he could still use. With control over a few key members of the Diet and the JSSDF, he could create orders to seize NERV that would look legitimate at first glance. The leak of Aoki's location was to ensure that the three people who any Soldat with sense feared, the renegade Noir, were somewhere far away from him during the attack.

"It's not the government who ordered this, it was Les Soldats." He announced. "We have to get this evidence to Tokyo-2 at once to stop the attack."

"Sir!" The radio operator reported. "Another battalion, this time from the UN, has also attacked NERV. The same reason as before."

"That must be SEELE's doing. We've got to get moving people. Let's go!"

* * *

Two battalions sent by two different governments stormed into the GeoFront. Although each of them had sufficient numbers to crush the defending security forces all by themselves in a standard engagement, several factors conspired against them.

The first factor was that it was impossible to fight a standard engagement in the corridors of Central Dogma. The sheer amount of area that needed to be covered changed the force from two battalions to forty platoons at best, and in practice something closer to two hundred squads. And a general rule of thumb in battles was that fighting small groups consecutively is considerably easier than fighting one group that was the size of all the small groups combined.

The second factor also came from the size of Central Dogma. There were literally miles of corridors in the base, and Misato wasn't the only person who had managed to get lost in those hallways. From the perspective of someone unfamiliar with the layout, the place was a maze. Section 2 knew the terrain, the invaders did not. As such, rather than attempt to defend every corridor, they defended choke points, and maneuvered around in the side corridors to cut off and ambush any unit they could pick off.

The third factor for each invading battalion was the presence of the other battalion. Neither of them expected a second army to be invading at the same time they were, and as a result of this, they ended up shooting at each other as well as Section 2.

Because of these factors, the battle for NERV degenerated into a chaotic three-way stalemate when reinforcements for the besieged defenders arrive – all three of them.

* * *

The two JSSDF soldiers who were guarding the access point they had seized from Section 2 were bored. They had finally gotten a deployment into an actual fight for the first time in years, and what was their assignment? A guard post. Everyone else in the unit was getting some actual action, and they were stuck guarding a door. They didn't even see the point. Everyone they were trying to fight was inside the door, so why did they need to guard about anyone fighting their way _in_? A figure appeared in the distance. As it approached, the two saw that it was a teenaged girl. They soon recognized the approaching girl as the Fourth Child.

The men had heard rumors about the Fourth Child. Something about her having been sold to an international crime ring to be turned into a hit woman and that her guardian was a DGSE superspy. Everyone had gotten a good laugh out of the rumors, but nobody in the barracks really believed them. There hadn't been anything resembling a cadre of true killers for hire (as opposed to criminals who occasionally were called on to kill people in addition to their normal duties in their organization) since Murder Inc was taken down in the 1940s. And everybody knew that double-o stuff was purely in the imagination of movie producers. There was no way that Bouquet was some kind of Jane Bond (Though a number of the men, having seen her picture from images leaked by the French, wouldn't have minded getting her in the sack after a few vodka martinis).

The Fourth Child raised her hands slowly and continued her approach. As the guards raised their weapons cautiously, the girl kept on walking towards them. Suddenly, the girl tilted her head to the side. A small knife flew through the space where her head used to be and lodged itself in one guard's throat. Before the other guard could react, the girl grabbed the knife, pulled it out, and stabbed it into the side of his throat, then removed it and threw it behind her back.

As Chloe caught her knife, cleaned it on the edge of her cloak and resheathed it, Kirika calmly took the weapons that fell from the hands of the men the two had just killed and continued on her way. Killing the guards hadn't even required them to break stride.

* * *

The two UNCMF soldiers standing guard outside the access point they had seized were bored. They had finally gotten a deployment into an actual fight for the first time in years, and what was their assignment? A guard post. They supposed that this was the answer to their unspoken question as to whether or not their squad sergeant was still mad at them for returning half an hour late from their last furlough. Their boredom was ended by the sound of someone approaching. They raised their weapons in anticipation.

"Is there a problem?" The approaching person asked, showing herself to be a rather attractive blonde in a slinky black dress. "I know I'm a little late in getting back from lunch but…"

The guards smirked. The woman had to be some kind of secretary whose primary duty was to serve as eye candy and/or mistress to someone of actual importance. A pity that they would have to kill her, but orders were orders. But that didn't mean that they couldn't have a little fun with her before pulling the trigger.

"We've been forced to go to high alert, miss. I'm afraid we'll have to search you before we can let you enter." One soldier lied.

The woman handed her bag to one soldier and obligingly raised her arms above her head in a pose more appropriate for a magazine centerfold than a weapons search. The other soldier smirked as he patted her down. The woman had quite a nice figure.

"Oooh, that feels nice." The woman cooed, as she reached out with one hand to touch his face. That hand then slowly drifted down his back and side. As she started to caress his rump, the soldier grinned. As her hand worked its way around to the front of his waist, it paused near his pistol holster. The man was too intent on his molestation to realize that he had let his guard down when the woman pulled his gun out of the holster, brought it up under his chin and pulled the trigger. She then turned and shot the other guard in the side of the head before he could react.

Mireille stripped off the cocktail dress and put on the more practical outfit she had stuffed into her handbag, which she stashed in a corner of the room. She then looted the bodies of the men she had killed for their weapons and ammunition and headed into the GeoFront.

* * *

Major General Kenta Hayashi of the JSSDF had only been informed the day before that he had been selected to take over as the new commander of NERV. He had made a point of donning his dress uniform, complete with his family swords in place of the flimsy dress blade he had been issued upon graduation, for the occasion of his taking command. He had been outraged to learn that the acting commander had refused to turn over command. Who was this mere schoolteacher who would deny his place in history as the man who won the war to save humanity from the Angels after the traitor who sought to sabotage his own command had been exposed and driven out?

As he stood in his command post overseeing the capture of the base that should by rights be his, he frowned in disappointment. Retaking the facility was taking far longer than he expected. He blamed it on the UN troops who were fraudulently claiming that one of their generals had been selected for the post of NERV Commander. Then he heard gunfire outside his command post.

The men standing guard outside the post fell through the door, one shot and the other stabbed. Two girls walked in after them. Kenta recognized one as one of the pilots that should be recognizing him as her commander. Acting on the instinct born from centuries of samurai heritage, the General drew his katana and brought it down in an overhead slash.

Had Kirika tried to jump back, she would have simply lengthened the arc where the blade intersected her body. She had trained with the sword and knew that. Instead of going back, she darted forward, grabbing his wrist in one hand and his elbow in the other, guiding the blade in the direction she wanted it to go.

Kenta Hayashi screamed in pain as his stomach was pierced by his own weapon. Kirika then twisted the sword as she pulled it out, and then brought it down on his neck, with not quite enough force to sever his head. The Hayashi clan would later claim that Kenta had committed seppuku.

* * *

Chloe caught the wakizashi that Kirika pulled from the belt of the late General Hayashi. This she laid against the throat of the post's communications officer.

"I want you to transmit a message in the clear to everyone in the area. I want it to be heard by all three sides of the fight down here, and by the population above. Do so and I'll let you live." She ordered.

Gulping nervously, the technician worked to set up the transmission and shakily held up a microphone. Chloe took it in her off hand. She knew that doing this would blow her cover, but the Saplings had agreed that given what she had already given to the Soldat investigators, that was only a matter of time anyway. Besides, a battle on the scale of what they were about to face was a difficult one even by their standards. If this was to be the final battle of the final Noir, then she wanted it to be remembered as such, so that everyone would know that their legend had existed for a reason.

"Attention, all JSSDF soldiers invading NERV on behalf of Les Soldats, and all UNCMF soldiers invading NERV on behalf of SEELE. This is Noir. If you fear to face the heart of darkness, you will stand aside." She said.

Chloe removed the sword from the man's throat. As the man sighed with relief, she flipped the sword around and struck him on the head with the hilt. After binding the unconscious soldier, she turned and left the command post with Kirika. The soldiers had been warned. If they didn't take the advice they had just been given and stand aside, that was their own problem.

* * *

Chloe's public announcement hit every single person in the area who was listening to the radio like a thunderbolt. Not many people knew about SEELE, but thanks to their propaganda leaks, everyone knew about Les Soldats. The thought that they had compromised enough of the Japanese government and military to arrange for an all-out assault on Tokyo-3, and issue official statements justifying it, upset the public considerably. The government offices in Tokyo-2 were quickly swamped with calls by people demanding answers. Those officials with no Soldat connections joined in those demands for answers. The officials who did have Soldat connections started contemplating escape routes in the event that the orders were traced back to them. Similar things started happening with the UN.

Law enforcement officers took note of the fact that the announcement had been publicly made by Noir. They now had a voiceprint to go with the alias. Some made plans to travel to Tokyo-3 once the fighting subsided in the hopes of identifying and possibly capturing the notorious serial killer.

The invading soldiers were perturbed by the announcement that both sides were invading Central Dogma on the strength of illegal orders issued by criminal conspiracies. Some tried to call to their superiors for an explanation, but they received no answer. Both command posts had been taken out by Noir's infiltration, leaving the soldiers scrambling to figure out who was now in command.

Then there were the reactions of the people who recognized the voice on the radio.

Several of Chloe's classmates gasped in shock as they listened. With the exception of Kensuke (who started blankly staring at the wall with an expression of sheer awe on his face), none of them really grasped the implications of the codename (Which caused most of them to come to the conclusion that she was some kind of secret agent), but they knew that Chloe had apparently thrown down a gauntlet before the invaders and was planning to knife anyone who tried to pick it up.

The bridge crew of NERV gaped in shock as they realized that a 14 year old girl had just issued a death threat to two entire armies, and fully intended to make good on it. The reaction of Section 2 was divided. Half of them were angry that they needed the help of the girl who killed their former commander to drive off the attackers. The others grinned in malicious anticipation of what would happen to the enemy when the girl responsible for their greatest humiliation was fighting on their side for a change.

One UN officer remembered the voice of a girl that killed a man he had been charged to guard and then deliberately left him alive at the request of the man he had failed to protect, and shivered in fear.

Lorenz Keel was not happy with the possibility of his plans being exposed when he was this close to success, and ordered the MP Evas deployed.

And Gendo Ikari smiled, knowing that phase two of his plan was starting just as he planned.

* * *

Shinji was trying to hide. The Section 2 agents who had been with him when the battle started were all down, having been killed or wounded fighting against the attackers while trying to escort him to the hanger bay. In the process of getting himself clear of that particular firefight, he had managed to get himself lost. Trying to find a landmark he recognized was something he didn't dare do, as it might just cause him to wander into another firefight. At the moment, the only thing he could do was try to keep himself alive. He was currently crouched behind a staircase, holding the gun he had been issued shortly after Chloe killed the third Rei. He had never fired that gun in anger before this day, and given that he had run out of bullets while getting clear of the last skirmish, he wasn't likely to ever again.

Several figures appeared around the corner. Shinji lifted his gun nervously. A large hand reached out and grabbed his wrist, forcing him to drop the gun.

"Found you, little boy." The man in the UNCMF uniform said. "Don't take this personally, kid, I'm just following orders."

The man raised his own weapon. Then a sword tip emerged from his chest. As the soldier fell to the ground, Shinji saw his sister spraying down the remainder of the group of soldiers with a machine gun held in her left hand. Only one man escaped the spray of bullets, and that was because the magazine ran out of bullets before it got to him. It didn't help him for long. Kirika launched herself at the remaining man, knocking his feet out from under him before crushing his throat with the butt of her rifle. Then she walked back to the man she had stabbed.

"So am I." She said, pulling the sword free. Then she turned on a small radio. "I've gotten to Shinji."

"Good." Fuyutsuki's voice came back. "Get him to the hanger bay. That area is more secure."

"Understood." Kirika turned her attention back to Shinji. "Are you alright, aniki?"

Shinji nodded, climbing to his feet. He then allowed himself to be led through Central Dogma.

* * *

Nemu Sakamoto was in trouble. She and her team were pinned down, with JSSDF troops coming at them from one direction and UNCMF troops coming from another. They couldn't pull back without exposing the giving up the emergency control room they were guarding. If that was breached, the invaders might be able to override the commands from the bridge and restart the elevators. With those running, they could bypass far too many of the security checkpoints, which were set up under the assumption that they could force any intruders to take the stairs. But they were running out of ammunition, and weren't in a position where they could loot their enemy's bodies for more bullets.

Suddenly, a series of screams started coming from the rear of the JSSDF unit. The screams started growing in number and volume. As they did, the sound of firing in that direction changed, as they started firing at something behind them instead of in front of them. As the sound of bullets died down, a green cloaked figure calmly strode down the hallway. One of the Section 2 men fired at the approaching figure out of reflex, but the bullet bounced off of a hexagonal field as the young girl continued her approach.

Nemu watched in shock as the girl she now recognized as Chloe Langley turned her attention to the UN troops. Nemu had to wonder why the people who turned her into an Angel hybrid bothered. The AT Field was almost totally unnecessary – it was practically impossible to hit her in the first place if she felt like dodging. Within a matter of seconds, the only person in the UN unit still alive was the officer in command, a blond man who looked rather old for his current rank. Strangely, Chloe stopped her final swing just short of his throat, looking at him as if he seemed familiar somehow.

"Heinz, wasn't it?" She asked. The man nodded nervously. The girl turned away.

"I made a personal promise to the general." She said calmly, as if reminding him of something. "I would very much like to be able to keep it." With that, Chloe sheathed her blade and started collecting her knives.

Nemu ordered her men to take the officer prisoner and to start gathering up more ammunition. As Chloe vanished into the winding hallways of Central Dogma, Nemu had to wonder what that exchange had been about.

* * *

"Okay, that's Shinji taken care of." Misato noted.

Captain Hatanaka nodded. He was fortunate that the three Noir had all taken radios from fallen Section 2 agents shortly after entering Central Dogma. Between that and the security cameras, he knew exactly where the key trouble spots were for the entire base and could guide the three deadliest killers in the world to neutralize them as if they were an incredibly lethal flying company. With them stomping out the hot spots, they might actually be able to survive this battle.

"Multiple AT Fields detected!" Hyuga announced.

"What!" Misato exclaimed.

"MAGI are analyzing… They're Evangelions!" Maya reported.

"So SEELE has sent the Mass Produced Evas after us." Fuyutsuki mused. "Katsuragi! Launch EVA-02 and have EVA-01 prepped for when the Third Child arrives!"

"Right!"

* * *

Asuka launched out into the GeoFront. She wasn't sure what this invasion was about, but she had heard some of the people that Section 2 had brought to the hanger area that the attacking soldiers had been shooting unarmed maintenance workers who were trying to surrender. Similar stories had been repeated by at least four other groups. Asuka hoped that the goons enjoyed their fun, because she was going to give them a thorough smackdown in return, and she had a giant robot to do it in.

She grabbed a rifle. This wasn't normally her kind of weapon, but the enemy Evas were being forced to enter the GeoFront in single file down the hole the 14th Angel made, which meant that she could damage them as they came in.

The white Evas started to appear. Asuka opened fire. One by one they dropped into the underground valley, and one by one Asuka shredded their wings with a hail of bullets. She wasn't nearly as accurate as Shinji would have been, but her targets couldn't dodge. Nine white Evangelions dropped to the ground. Nine white Evangelions climbed back to their feet.

Asuka was reminded of a comment Shinji made about his battle with EVA-00 when it was hijacked by Nagisa. He said that the remotely controlled Eva didn't act as if it felt pain from the damage he inflicted. Judging by how quickly they got back up, that might be the case here. This could be more difficult than she thought.

On the other hand, her cousin had been facing odds like this regularly for years. Asuka had been training in this form of combat just as long as Chloe had trained in hers. It was time to show the world that some kinds of talents definitely ran in families. Asuka grabbed a spear and prepared for battle.

* * *

As Gendo saw the MP Evas approach Tokyo-3, he frowned. The old men in the Human Instrumentality Committee were trying to interfere. If they seized Lilith or EVA-01 before he could capture Chloe, they could initiate their version of Third Impact before he could start his own. He couldn't allow that to happen. He had come too far to permit that to happen.

"Come, Rei." He said. "It is time."

The two entered the GeoFront. Efforts to stop them by any of the three forces fighting in Central Dogma were futile, as all attacks were deflected off of Rei's AT Field. Gendo didn't even bother shooting back as the two made their way to Terminal Dogma.

* * *

Shinji finally understood what the phrase "maidens who govern death" meant. It had nothing to do with religion, mysticism or the supernatural. It was much, much simpler. It meant that if Noir decided you should die, you were dead, and there was nothing you could do to stop it. Kirika had killed at least fifty people as she escorted him to the hanger, and everything he saw indicated that she was just getting started. It was as if she was a totally different person as she fought.

Then Shinji realized that she was a totally different person. He wasn't looking at Kirika Ikari, the sister who had been taken away from him by an uncaring father. He wasn't looking at Kirika Yumura, the fellow pilot who was slowly trying to remember what it was like to care about others. He was looking at the living weapon that Altena had created from a broken-hearted little girl who had had her family stripped from her. He was looking at Noir.

Their journey had increased in urgency when they learned that they were being attacked by Evangelions as well as infantry. It increased again when they learned that a major assault had been launched at the hanger area. Their efforts were in vain. By the time they reached a walkway that overlooked the main hanger, it was obvious that the JSSDF had taken out the Section 2 agents guarding the hanger.

The defenders had not gone down easily. Only six people were left after the firefight had ended. Kirika looked down at her enemies critically, then turned to her brother.

"Wait here." She said, then backflipped over the railing to Shinji's horror.

Kirika shot three men as she spun through the air. Then she landed on the shoulders of a fourth. The man she landed on was built like a linebacker. It didn't help as 62 kilograms of acrobatic killer struck him in the collarbone at roughly twenty meters per second. He crashed to the floor. Kirika sprung back up, drawing her stolen katana as she did so. Two slices later, and all the soldiers were out of action. After taking a brief moment to finish off the one she had used to break her fall. Then she called for Shinji to come down.

"You'd better suit up." She told him. "It looks like the techs got Unit 01 ready to launch before the JSSDF broke through."

When Shinji returned from the locker room, he noticed his sister was breathing heavily, and that there was a blotch of red on one side of her shirt that didn't look like it had come from all the people she had been killing.

"Imouto, are you alright?" He asked.

"One of the soldiers managed to clip me while I was recovering from the jump. I've taken worse."

"But you're hurt!"

"Shinji, you need to launch. Don't worry about me. This is just like the Trials – they're throwing an army at me to see if I can fight my way home. I've already done this once, and this time around they spotted me with an advantage."

"What in this whole mess can you consider an _advantage?_ "

Kirika looked into her brother's eyes. "This time I know where home is."

* * *

It had been a tough fight, but Asuka had finally fought her way down to the last enemy EVA. The other eight were scattered across the GeoFront, along with the remains of the various vehicles brought down by the two invading armies, which had ended up being trampled in the struggle, completely unnoticed by both sides. Now she just had to finish the last one before she ran out of power – her power cord had been severed some time previously.

As she moved in on the final MP Evangelion, blips started appearing on her radar. Somehow, the units she had already beaten were regenerating. One of them grabbed up its dropped weapon and threw it at her. As it flew towards her, the weapon changed shape, shifting to resembling the Lance of Longinus, the enormous spear that she had used to destroy the 15th Angel. Caught off balance as her momentum took her in the wrong direction to dodge, she was helpless to do anything as what looked like the world's largest two-tined fork hurtled at her…

A burst of energy smashed into the lance replica, shattering it and altering the course of the larger pieces. Instead of driving straight through Unit 02's head, the shaft of the lance scraped across the side of its head, gouging a trench in the armor. A second burst of energy knocked down the MP Eva that Asuka had been running towards. A look at the sensor readings showed that one of the blips belonged to EVA-01.

"You're late, Third Child!" She called.

"Sorry, had trouble getting to the hanger." Shinji replied, tossing Asuka a new power cord. Asuka connected it and grinned as her Eva's batteries started recharging.

"Right, these things ignore pain and seem to be able to regenerate damage. We'll have to take them down for keeps if we want to stop them."

"Okay. Let's take care of these things. If they're gone, all the soldiers that Kirika and the others are dealing with might pull back."

Asuka hadn't known that the Fourth was back. She wondered what the girl thought she could do against two thousand invading soldiers. Surely even she couldn't kill that many people all by herself.

Then she kicked herself. Kirika might be only one girl, but she was the heir of a thousand year legacy of elite killers. Six hundred years previously, _one_ Noir had managed to almost single-handedly change the course of a war that anyone with sense would have given up on as a lost cause. Asuka tried extrapolating that to figure out how much damage _three_ of them could inflict. The results weren't pretty – for the enemy, at least.

"Those poor, poor, jarheads." She muttered, grabbing the weapon of the MP Eva that Shinji had shot.

* * *

Kirika watched her brother take his Evangelion out. Then she examined her bullet wound. She had told the truth – she had taken wounds much worse than in training, let alone actual battles. Not that there was much of a difference to a Sapling. Special Forces units often took pride in the fact that their training regimens were so intensive that people occasionally died in accidents while going through them. Les Soldats didn't train at that low a level. No Sapling had ever died in a training _accident_. If a Sapling died, it was because the trainers were trying to kill them _intentionally_. If the Sapling couldn't find a way to survive, then they obviously weren't good enough to become Noir.

The wound looked like it was just a graze. The bullet had gone through cleanly without lodging in her body. That simplified things considerably. It would probably need stitches later, but she didn't have time for that at the moment. Scrounging around in the female pilot's locker room, she found a clean towel and cut off a section to use as a bandage around the freshly cleaned wound. Now she just needed to find something to reliably hold it in place. An idea came to her.

The girl who had entered the locker room had been dressed in normal, if torn and bloodstained, street clothes. The girl who left the locker room was dressed in a form fitting black bodysuit with an odd bulge on one side where a bandage was held in place by the suit's pressure seal. Kirika then added a gun belt, ammunition pouches, and all the weapons she could practically carry to her wardrobe. As she tucked the katana into the belt, Kirika Yumura disappeared. In her place stood Kirika the True Noir, ready to return to the hunt.

* * *

Gendo and Rei stood in Terminal Dogma, in the shadow of Lilith's crucified form. Gendo knew that Noir would be coming for him. NERV still appeared to control the bridge and the security system, so they would have detected him, and more importantly, Rei's AT Field, which she had been using almost constantly as they made their way down here. Because of that, there was only one particular Noir they dared send against him – the one he wanted them to. He was not disappointed.

"Welcome, Noir." He said, noting slight signs that the Nephilim was starting to tire.

"If you knew I was coming for you, you would have done better to hide. I've already killed your defective replica of Kirika once, I can do it again." She countered.

"You understand nothing. With you here, the final stage of my Scenario can now begin. You have what I need to initiate Third Impact, and I will have it."

Chloe drew a short sword. "You won't be able to start anything if you're dead, traitor."

As Chloe started circling to find a way past Rei to reach Gendo, a third voice called out. "I can't let you kill him, Chloe."

Chloe glanced at the newcomer. "Why not?"

"Corsica." Mireille stated simply.

Chloe thought about that for a moment, then nodded, lowering her sword.

Gendo smiled. He didn't know what happened at Corsica that had caused the other Noir to wish his life spared, but that simply improved the chances that he could finish his plans. He was still congratulating himself for the apparent stroke of fortune he had received when Mireille gunned him down.

* * *

As Gendo fell dead, Rei felt rage for the first time in her lives – all five of them. The Commander had created her so that he could achieve his goals. Her ultimate purpose was to aid him in achieving his goals. With the Commander dead, his goals would be forever unachieved. The woman responsible for guarding the Children who had attempted to sabotage her ability to fulfill her purpose had just completely destroyed it.

With a scream of pure hatred, Rei launched herself at the woman who had just ruined her life. Mireille sidestepped her charge and kicked out. The blow did not penetrate Rei's AT Field, but it did knock her down. Rei climbed to her feet and readied herself for a second attack when a knife embedded itself partway through her AT Field.

"I believe your fight is with me." Chloe pointed out.

Rei was forced to admit that the other girl had a point. Chloe had murdered her third body in cold blood. She had made the rather insulting insinuation that her sole purpose in life was to replace the Fourth Child after the Commander had sent his daughter away – and that she was not and could never be good enough to fulfill that purpose. And she was the person that the Commander had said must be captured in order to complete his Scenario. The best way Rei could honor the late Commander Ikari was to complete his Scenario for him. She shifted her attention from the blonde Corsican to the Nephilim.

It quickly became clear to Rei that had she challenged Chloe without the use of her AT Field, she would have lost very quickly. Even with the edge granted to her by the considerable difference in their relative levels of fatigue, she was barely holding her own. What Chloe had apparently learned to do with her AT Field made what would have happened had she been more rested very apparent.

Rei remembered that one of the common pieces of advice that trainers gave her while she was learning how to use weapons was to treat the weapon as if it was an extension of her body. Chloe had mastered that lesson and taken it to a new level. She had internalized the concept that her weapons were a part of her to the point where her AT Field surrounded not only her body, but her weapons as well, following the edge of the blades and granting them a sharpness that no physical object could ever hope to achieve. Chloe's dagger and short sword were sharp enough to cut an AT Field. Had Chloe been more rested, or Rei more tired, the assassin Nephilim's strikes could very well have pierced Rei's AT Field far enough to kill her. As it was, the attacks were slowed enough that Rei was escaping with shallow cuts – so far.

It didn't take Rei long to figure out that if she allowed Chloe to control the fight she was certain to lose. If she was to complete her mission, she had to take the offensive. She saw an opening and prepared for a single strike.

* * *

Chloe knew she was getting tired. If she hadn't been, she'd have taken down this counterfeit Noir already. The AT Field wasn't helping either. She could cut through it, but it was like cutting through thick leather, slowing her blades and reducing the power of her hits. Thick leather that repaired itself shortly after she cut it. Still, Rei's AT Field only allowed her to keep herself intact despite the girl's total lack of serious combat experience. It didn't come close to making the counterfeit the equal of a True Noir. Chloe noticed a gap in Rei's guard, which she thrust towards with her wakizashi.

The sword pierced Rei's AT Field. Rei twisted and took the hit in her left shoulder. Suddenly, Chloe felt something wrap around her right wrist and squeeze. She cried out as her wrist was crushed by Rei's AT Field. A moment later, her left ankle was also broken. Chloe fell to the ground as one leg could no longer support her weight, dropping her weapons as she did so. As Chloe tried to pull herself up to a sitting position, Rei's AT Field pinned her to the floor. Her left hand was pinned behind her back, and her right hand was useless.

Rei pulled the sword out of her shoulder and tossed it next to Chloe. As Rei bent over her, Chloe desperately felt with her left hand for a new weapon as she struggled to gain enough leverage to free her left hand to use that weapon. Rei's hand reached out to touch Chloe's neck. As her hand touched Chloe's throat, it started flowing into the other girl's body, like a stick being pushed into water.

Rei's hand started moving down Chloe's body. As her arm encountered Chloe's tunic, the fabric started to rip. Chloe's questing hand found the hilt of a weapon. It didn't feel like one of her knives, but she would take whatever she could get at this point. The sensation of Rei passing through her body was strange and decidedly unpleasant, and while she wasn't sure exactly what would happen if she didn't break free before Rei found what she was looking for (or finished ripping her tunic in half, whichever came first), she was fairly certain that it wouldn't be good.

Rescue came in the form of Mireille Bouquet. Unable to directly aid in a fight where both participants were moving too much to accurately aim at either one, and where the bullets had a good chance of bouncing off without damaging anything, she had patiently waited for her opening. With both of the fighters now almost totally motionless and Rei's attention focused on keeping Chloe pinned down, she had her chance. She raised her pistol and emptied a full clip at the First Child.

Rei's AT Field stopped every single bullet, but in doing so she diverted her attention from Chloe. Having regained the ability to move, Chloe smashed her head into Rei's face, causing Rei to fall back slightly, her arm pulling out of Chloe's torso as she did so. Chloe shifted her weight, leaning on her right side long enough to free her left hand. Then she gripped the small, two tined fork in her hand as she made one final desperate thrust.

* * *

A/N: I'm amazed none of the reviewers who commented on the last line of the previous chapter didn't recall Misato's statement in End of Evangelion: The final Angel is Man.

One thing that always bugged me about EoE was that as a UN organization, the JSSDF had no legal right to seize control of NERV. The only explanation I can think of for that is that since SEELE seriously expected that the world would end that afternoon (With considerable justification), they really didn't care about the technical legality of whatever actions they could fast-talk people into taking that morning.

Murder Incorporated was a real murder-for-hire organization that worked for various organized crime groups from the 1920s to 1940s.

Heinz is an actual character from Noir, one of the rare people to knowingly encounter Noir (although he never heard the codename) and live. He showed up in episode 12. General Reimann's final request to Chloe before she killed him was that she spare the lives of his bodyguards, which Heinz was in charge of.

I knew the moment I started writing this that Mireille had to be the one to kill Gendo. Kirika killed Mireille's parents, it's only fair that Mireille be allowed to kill Kirika's father.

My thanks to gunman for coming up with the idea of how to get Noir outside of the GeoFront at the start of the battle. I had had their break in scenes planned out for over a year and a half, and up until a couple weeks ago I didn't know why I was going to need them.


	29. Welcome Home

Disclaimer: I do not own Evangelion or Noir

The Black Hands of NERV

By Bissek

Final Chapter

Welcome Home

The soldiers from the United Nations Combined Military Forces were worried. The three-way warfare in the winding corridors of Central Dogma was bad enough. In addition to that, there was something prowling the hallways. Entire squads had been dropping off the communications network, many of them without being able to report anything other than screams of terror and/or pain. Other squads had reported sighting the Fourth Child and that they were moving to eliminate her as per their orders to terminate the pilots. Said squads were never heard from again. One lieutenant found a map of the compound and traced a path between the general locations of the disappearances. The obvious conclusion was that the only difference between the groups that vanished without reporting who they were fighting and the ones who spotted the Fourth Child before dying was that they managed to spot the bait this hunter unit was using before getting wiped out. The alternative, that every single one of those people had been killed by a fourteen year old girl, was one the troops refused to accept.

The lieutenant had ordered all of his squads to form up in one of the conference rooms. It might be possible for this hunter unit to take out squads fast enough to not have any real intelligence as to what was happening get out, but it would be a lot harder to do that to an entire platoon. The last of the squads had arrived, and the lieutenant was briefing the men as to his conclusions. He knew that he was near the last location the hunter unit had taken out a squad. That meant he had a good chance of intercepting it.

His briefing was interrupted by a length of piping flying through the air and striking him in the back. As he fell forward, his men noticed that a grenade had been securely tied to the back end of the pipe with wire. A grenade with the pin removed. The men who had surrounded their fallen officer were scythed down by flying shrapnel as the grenade went off at waist height. As men who were outside the blast radius ran for the open door, a second grenade was tossed in.

The survivors of the second explosion left the conference room more cautiously, and found no sign of the location of the attacker, only an open supply closet door and a discarded arrangement of pipes in the shape of a crude spear thrower to explain how the lieutenant had been killed.

A scream came from the rear of the formation. The soldiers spun to see the man acting as tail guard with a sword driven completely through him. A hail of bullets came from the direction of the mortally wounded soldier as his killer used him as a meat shield to stop any return fire. As the last man fell, he understood what had happened: The attacker had had been braced against the walls directly above the doorway, safely out of sight until the moment to drop down and strike came.

Kirika pulled the katana out of the man she had used as a shield and entered the conference room to finish off the men who had been wounded but not killed by the grenades. Their last sight would be of a girl in a black bodysuit splattered with the red of other people's blood walking towards them with a sword in her right hand and a machine gun in her left, a totally emotionless expression on her face.

* * *

Asuka impaled the seventh MP Eva on her lance and tossed it aside. The regenerative powers of her opponents might have healed the Evangelions proper, but it did not repair damage to their armor. That flaw made it easier for Asuka to take them down a second time now that she no longer in immediate danger of running out of power. The fact that the first Evangelion that Shinji had shot revealed something that resembled an Angel's core was also a big help. A quick test soon revealed that an MP Eva that took a serious hit there stayed down.

Now the battle had been reduced from nine on one to two on two. An uninformed observer would have considered this a fair fight. An informed observer would note that since one side had taken 78% casualties and the other had taken 0% casualties, the fight had never been fair, as the side that had started outnumbering the other was hopelessly outclassed.

Another shot from Shinji blasted off the armor of an eighth Evangelion. Asuka turned to finish off that target. As she did, the final MP Eva made a dash for EVA-01, trying to take out Asuka's fire support before she could focus her attention on her last opponent. Shinji's final shot took the enemy in the head. While that was a wound the S2 equipped Evangelion could recover from, it was serious enough that it was effectively immobilized until it could regenerate the damage. It was now in a desperate race between its ability to heal and Shinji's ability to pry off armor plates with his progressive knife and destroy its core.

Shinji won.

* * *

Chloe knew that she would only have one chance to inflict a serious injury on Rei. From her current position, she wasn't really in a position to strike most places that would result in a quick death on the other Nephilim, especially given the low penetrative ability of the fork she was using. But she had read the reports of Rei's post 13th Angel surgery and knew the location of a certain spherical tumor. A tumor that was also found in an examination later performed on her, and explained to be an S2 organ, the source of an Angel's power. She knew exactly where to strike.

The fork hit Rei's AT Field. Rei was able to slow the attack but not stop it, and the small utensil punched through the barrier and pierced Rei's AT Field. As Chloe drove the fork deeper, she felt the sensation caused by Rei's AT Field fade. Without the full function of her extra organ, Rei could no longer call upon the power that allowed her to challenge Chloe. As Chloe released the fork and reached for the dropped sword, she looked into the eyes of the girl who was known for having virtually no emotions and saw fear.

The wakizashi, its blade brought to supernatural sharpness by Chloe's instinctive AT Field usage, swung through the air. The impossibly sharp weapon cut into Rei's throat, cleanly severing her head and sending it flying. As the Nephilim's body fell backwards, her damaged S2 organ started glowing brightly enough to be seen through her skin. Chloe focused her own AT Field as best as she could as Rei's decapitated body exploded in a burst of light.

When Chloe's vision returned, the metal flooring in front of her looked like it had melted. Two tunnels had been gouged in the walls to either side of her. The cross holding the crucified Angel had been cut down and had fallen into the lake of LCL, which had been set on fire. Everything behind the line that had apparently been defined by her AT Field was intact. It was a good thing this had happened down in Terminal Dogma – had that explosion taken place up in Central Dogma, it probably would have caused a major structural failure.

Chloe looked down at herself. Her tunic was ripped down to her navel and the exposed skin was liberally splattered with the blood that had sprayed from Rei's neck – decapitations were even messier than she thought they would be. She supposed that it was a good thing that none of her classmates could see her as she was. She could already picture the conclusion that they would make: Rei had tried to rape her, and she had protected her virtue by whacking the girl's head off, and then blew her up for good measure. If a rumor like that got out, the odds that the average guy at school would be willing to date her under any circumstances would drop to zero. Not that she had the slightest interest in any of the _average_ guys.

Chloe crawled towards her discarded weapons, unable to stand because of her injuries. With her broken wrist and broken ankle on opposite sides of her body, she couldn't even hope to prop herself up against a makeshift crutch. After cleaning her blades and sheathing them, she laid back. Her part in the battle was over. There was no way she could fight any more in her current condition.

Mireille walked up to Chloe and pulled her upright. Leaning against the older woman, the two hobbled out of Terminal Dogma. As they passed Rei's severed head, which had miraculously landed at a point clear of the blast made by the rest of her body detonating, Chloe was reminded of an idle thought she had had shortly after the first time she had killed the girl. A thought on the lines of wondering if cutting Ayanami's head off would be the only way to ensure that the girl stayed dead. Chloe looked down into the counterfeit Noir's lifeless eyes and made a single comment.

"There can be only one."

* * *

Major Julio Sanchez watched as the two NERV Evangelions finished off the last of the Mass Produced Evangelions that had been provided to them. Their loss turned an already bad situation even worse.

Julio was technically fourth in the chain of command of the battalion sent to seize control of NERV HQ. But his commander had been shot, the second in command had been literally caught underfoot during the Evangelion battle, and the third in command had fallen victim to whatever was picking off squads one at a time within Central Dogma. That left Julio in command.

The tactical situation looked hopeless. All of their anti-Evangelion firepower was gone. Most of their other vehicles had been destroyed during the Evangelion battle by parties who barely even noticed they were there, and what was left would soon follow if they tried to do anything. The casualties of the infantry inside the main building were atrocious and still rising. And there was also the question brought up by that mystery transmission as to whether or not the orders to attack this base were legal in the first place. Julio was certain that several of the details of those orders were direct violations of the Articles of War, and had gone on record as saying so.

There was no way Julio could hope to rally the battalion to victory. But if he hurried, he might be able to salvage something before the unit was technically reduced to the size of a company. He waved over his communications officer and ordered a full retreat.

* * *

The tension on the bridge caused by the numerous conflicts eased as the AT Field reading indicating the presence of the Second Angel winked out. It faded considerably when the last of the MP Evas went down. When the UNCMF started to flee, they were openly cheering. Ten minutes after that, a transmission came in over the radio from the JSSDF Chief of Staff ordering the survivors of the remaining army to stand down. The Battle of Tokyo-3 was over. NERV had won.

With the shooting finally over, the staff of NERV began the arduous process of clearing away the dead and patching up the wounded. Wreckage had to be cleared away. Statements had to be made to politicians demanding answers to questions that they should have asked before the shooting ever started. Numerous NERV employees started trying to contact their families in the city to let them know that they had survived. The battle might have been over, but the aftermath would take days or weeks to resolve.

Agents of Interpol arrived during the cleanup, hoping to find a solid clue as to the identity of Noir and possible even apprehend her. Given that Chloe was exhausted, in a wheelchair, and with one arm in a sling, they actually might have been able to arrest her without taking too many casualties. They were rather upset when Kaji arrived and informed them that the UN had already promised Chloe immunity for her crimes in exchange for her assistance in dealing with Les Soldats.

The other two members of Noir technically didn't have that protection. They knew that they weren't officially associated with Noir as of yet, but with Chloe identified, it was only a matter of time. They quietly slipped away from the facility after Kirika's bullet wound was stitched up.

As they were leaving, they ran into Kaji. The JDA agent proposed a simple deal for them. In exchange for one final mission from Noir, the Japanese government would sponsor a resolution in the UN to grant them immunity as thanks for their efforts in helping to stop the Angel menace. Given the identity of the proposed targets and the fact that they would be well positioned to vanish after the job ended even if the resolution fell through, they agreed.

* * *

The whole story was never released to the public. That is not to say that no explanation of the events that ultimately culminated in the Battle of Tokyo-3 was ever produced. A reporter managed to piece together a story based on sparse facts, rumors, and highly erroneous assumptions to create an explanation that made sense to the world, which went something like this:

Gendo Ikari was a Soldat acting as a double agent within SEELE. SEELE had initiated Second Impact and created the Evangelions to fend off the Angels until they were ready to start a Third Impact. In a totally unrelated plan, Les Soldats commandeered the daughter of Gendo Ikari and the niece of Evangelion developer Kyoko Soryu to be used in their enforcer training program. Gendo, realizing that he would need his daughter to pilot an Evangelion later on, created the half-Angel Rei Ayanami as a substitute.

Years later, Les Soldats learned that their two top enforcer candidates (codenamed Noir) were related to two (actually three) of the initially selected pilots. They started planning to see if they could arrange for their enforcers to become pilots so that they could control the Evangelions and use them to seize overt control over the world.

Their plans were disrupted by the actions of a young DGSE agent named Mireille Bouquet, whose parents had been murdered by a Soldat agent for refusing to turn their daughter over to become an enforcer. Mireille had somehow managed to track down one of the other candidates and somehow managed to convince her to defect. Efforts to convince the other candidate to defect fell through, and resulted in the death of Chloe Langley at the hands of Kirika Yumura, nee Ikari.

It was at this point that Kirika was found and recruited by NERV, not as a Soldat mole as was originally intended, but as a quasi-DGSE agent, who insisted on taking her control officer with her. Unfortunately for Kirika's brother, years of Soldat efforts to reshape her mind into something more suitable for their purposes had scrambled her memories, rendering her unable to remember her family.

Around this time, Les Soldats discovered the true origins of Rei Ayanami and realized that if they could duplicate this, they could not only control the Evangelions, but also produce an infinite supply of elite foot soldiers as well. Because of this, they created the second Chloe and sent her to Tokyo-3 with the intent of eliminating the pilots. Their plans were thwarted again by Mireille Bouquet, who, aided by Agent Ryoji Kaji of the JDA, managed to convince the second Chloe to defect. The Soldat attack on Tokyo-3 was a last ditch effort to seize the Evangelions and eliminate the existing pilots and/or defectors.

NERV knew the explanation was at least partially wrong. But since they didn't really know the whole truth, either, they kept quiet. The pilots and Chloe knew a sizable portion of the story was absolute nonsense, but since explaining the truth would involve indicting themselves or people close to them in capital crimes, they also kept quiet. The DGSE knew that Mireille Bouquet was not one of their officers, nor did they have any anti-Soldat operations going until the entire world knew of the organization's existence. They also knew that even if she was, people with her skills would not be typical of their field agents any more than the skills demonstrated by the movie character John Rambo were typical of the US Army Green Berets. But since the official story made them look good, they declined to comment in a manner that made everyone assume that the story was true, but that they could not confirm it for security reasons. The JDA stated that since the case they were working against Les Soldats was still active, they could not discuss the details for security reasons. Everyone took that for additional confirmation.

The militaries of the world looked at the story and heaved a sigh of relief that the Soldat plan had failed. In the battle of Tokyo-3, 2,143 soldiers had invaded the GeoFront. The invading armies suffered 734 dead and 519 wounded. Of those, 467 of the dead and none of the wounded were caused by three people – the Saplings. Only two people had faced Noir in the battle and lived: Communications Specialist Yosho Ishimura, who Chloe had knocked unconscious after borrowing his radio, and Lt Heinz Schultz, who Chloe deliberately spared when she decided to honor a promise made by her previous self to spare his life.

Taking the fact that three Noir had destroyed two companies – one squad at a time – and were working on a third when their enemies ran away, analysts extrapolated what would have happened had Les Soldats succeeded in mass producing them and came to the conclusion that a full company of Noir could destroy any pure infantry force in the world.

The rivalry between the French and the Germans did carry over into the records of the Angel War. Both looked at the records of the pilots and claimed victory for different reasons.

1\. Asuka Langley Soryu: 10.83 (6th, 7th – shared, 8th, 10th, 15th, 16th – shared, 6 MP Evas)

2\. Shinji Ikari: 9.83 (3rd, 4th, 5th, 7th – shared, 12th, 14th, 16th – shared, EVA-00, 3 MP Evas)

3\. Kirika Yumura: 3.33 (9th, 13th, 16th – shared, 17th)

4\. Ritsuko Akagi: 1 (11th)

4\. Rei Ayanami: 1 (Jet Alone)

4\. Chloe Langley: 1 (Rei Ayanami – Though there was some debate as to whether or not this kill should be counted twice, as she killed her on two separate occasions)

Since the German pilot had achieved more kills than any other pilot, the Germans considered themselves the winner (Asuka took considerable pleasure in the fact that she had come out of the rankings as the official #1 pilot). The French countered with the fact that their pilot was the one who had given the other pilots advanced combat training, was so naturally talented a fighter that making her pilot actually handicapped her, and was the only pilot to ever take out an Angel without needing an Evangelion (Kensuke sold his recording of Kirika's battle with Kaworu for a small fortune, along with the recording of the Gym Kendo Match. Section 2 didn't like it, but were forced to admit that there was nothing remotely classified in either recording). Both sides continued sniping at each other without ever really resolving anything.

The historical archives of Les Soldats were uncovered at the Manor. The historians who examined them choked on the revelations uncovered with them. The French did notice the parallels between Kirika and the deceased Noir Jeanne D'Arc, much as she had feared they would. Had she not vanished during the battle, Shinji was certain that Kirika would have been appalled by the reaction of the French. He knew that his sister did not particularly enjoy the spotlight, and would not have enjoyed being hailed as the spiritual successor of France's greatest martyr, who had taken up her predecessor's cause and completed her mission (Especially since Jeanne's martyrdom had accomplished precisely nothing in regards to Les Soldats). They went so far as to treat Kirika's landscapes as historical masterpieces simply because she had painted them, despite the fact that Kirika was not and was not likely to be more than a competent amateur. Shinji had had to contact Section 2 to make certain that his sister's admirers didn't walk off with the paintings or any of her other belongings.

The French were so caught up in praising their self-styled hero that they ended up co-sponsoring the resolution to offer her and Mireille immunity for any crimes they might have committed, which passed readily.

Many people wondered where Kirika and Mireille had vanished to. While Shinji was one of them, he wasn't worried. He knew that his sister would come back home.

* * *

After several weeks of repair to the building and the surrounding streets, school had finally reopened. The class that the pilots in was easy to determine from an outside perspective. It was the one with roughly half the class in wheelchairs, crutches, or large amounts of bandages. Thanks to the attack of the 17th Angel, they looked like the casualty ward of a military hospital after a battle. Which was fairly accurate, as things went.

The two pilots and one Nephilim still in school were among the battered. Shinji's injuries were all fairly minor. Asuka's were mostly minor, but synchronization feedback from the lance that Shinji had deflected had gouged a deep cut in one cheek that would leave a highly visible scar. It could have been worse – had the lance not been deflected she probably would have lost an eye. And Chloe was still confined to a wheelchair until either her ankle healed enough to support her weight or her wrist healed enough to allow her to handle a crutch.

Rather than recriminations for what Nagisa had been able to do because they hadn't been able to stop him sooner, which the pilots had feared, the choice topic of conversation was the battle that had been fought in the GeoFront. Everyone in the class wanted to talk about the battle, the limited footage of the fighting that NERV had seen fit to release to the public, and the patched together explanation of the background of the battle.

One comment made about the footage stuck in Chloe's head: a student describing one of the scenes with Kirika (Which, taken collectively, killed all hope Kirika had of not scaring away any potential boyfriends had she been interested in getting one) in it mentioned that she seemed like she was a totally different person than the girl they knew in class. Chloe considered that statement over lunch (After having to pull a knife on Kensuke to get him to leave her alone).

The Kirika shown in the footage was the girl that Chloe had admired and longed for her entire life, the perfect killer who had been the ultimate example of what it meant to be Noir. But that Kirika had almost nothing in common with the Kirika that everyone in Tokyo-3 who knew her dealt with on a day to day basis. For all intents and purposes the two Kirikas were as close to being different people as they possibly could be without the body containing them being considered schizophrenic.

Chloe had been in love with Kirika the True Noir, not Kirika Yumura. The ultimate reason that Chloe had botched her courtship of Kirika in her previous life was that she had failed to understand that they weren't really the same person – and that Kirika Yumura didn't even like her True Noir persona, she just used it when she had to and kept it locked away the rest of the time. And even if Chloe had noticed the difference, it wouldn't have mattered. Kirika the True Noir would never have returned Chloe's love. Kirika had openly admitted that her True Noir persona was incapable of understanding the concept, let alone expressing it.

Chloe realized that she had spent ten years of her life (or lives) chasing an impossible dream. But unlike when she had thought that Kirika had hated her, the discovery didn't hurt this time. Perhaps that was a sign that she had managed to move on from the obsession that had literally destroyed her life once and would have done so a second time if her cousin hadn't intervened.

Well, there were three billion people in the world who were not Kirika. Many of them had reached a point where they were willing to consider romantic attachments, something that, with retrospect, Chloe had been forced to conclude that Kirika wasn't. There was one other in particular that seemed interesting to her, and who seemed to be trying to subtly broadcast to her that he might be interested in her in a manner that would not be noticed by the rest of the class. She'd have to talk to him when school got out.

* * *

Classes were over for the day. The students packed their bags and prepared to wheel or limp their way back home. Chloe caught Shinji's arm as he walked past.

"You can take the fork out of your shirt now, Shinji." She said simply.

The class turned to watch as Shinji sheepishly removed the utensil from under his shirt. They had all heard the story of Kirika's fork. Was Shinji trying to make a pass at the girl who was seeking to court his sister? They held their breath as they now knew that Chloe was a (theoretically retired) professional killer, who was more than capable of making her disapproval of any unwanted advances rather painfully clear. The fact that Chloe only had the use of one arm and one leg at the moment would only slow her down, not stop her.

Chloe took the fork from his hand and pulled him down so that he was leaning with in reach. She carefully tucked the fork into his pocket.

"If you wanted to ask me out, you could have done so in a normal fashion. But I appreciate the thought." She said. Then she kissed him.

* * *

Lorenz Keel was a hunted man, and he knew it. To the best of his knowledge, he was the only member of the Human Instrumentality Committee still alive. All of the others had been killed by parties unknown, one by one. It didn't take that much effort to figure out that he would be next.

He had been so _close_ to starting Instrumentality! If the Third Child had died as he'd supposed to, or even been delayed another minute at most, the MP Evas could have destroyed EVA-02. With that Unit down, they could have easily overwhelmed Unit 01 and initiated Third Impact as he had planned. All of his plans ruined because one little girl had refused to let his men kill her brother.

"Who do these Noir people think they are?" He cursed rhetorically.

"Noir… It is the name of an ancient fate… Two maidens that govern death… The peace of the newly-born, their black hands protect." A voice said.

Keel looked up to see the face of Kirika Yumura. Knowing the reason she was there without needing to ask, he rose to his feet and charged her, hoping that he could knock her down and flee before she could fire.

He wasn't nearly fast enough.

* * *

Doctor Louis Descroix walked through his laboratory. Some members of the Soldat leadership had tried to blame him for the fact that the clone he had created had gone rogue and killed one of their own. It wasn't his fault that they couldn't remember that the single greatest problem with weapons that can think for themselves was that they had an unfortunate tendency to think for themselves.

The leadership hadn't been in touch with him lately. He supposed it might have something to do with his perceived disgrace, but the contacts had shut off far more abruptly than he had expected. Oh, well, that just meant he had more time to perform his own research instead of other peoples.

The door opened, and a figure walked in. Descroix looked at the woman angrily. What in the world did she think she was doing walking in here dressed like that? This was supposed to be a clean room! He didn't exactly have Angel specimens to spare, and here this interloper was contaminating the lab by walking around in unsterilized street clothes.

Mireille interrupted his thoughts with a bullet to the head before ransacking the lab for the container holding the original sample of Adam and destroying the remaining clones of Chloe.

* * *

Henri Chaban was a florist who had lived in Corsica his entire life. He had lived a quiet life, and knew just about everyone in his neighborhood. As such, it was an unusual event for a stranger to walk into his shop.

The customer wore a long black jacket, with a hood that obscured the face. Henri didn't know why she was trying to conceal herself. There normally wasn't anything remotely secretive about buying flowers.

"Are you new to the area?" He asked, trying to make small talk as he cut a bouquet of a dozen lilies.

"Just visiting. I'm here to pay my respects to someone." The girl replied.

"And who would that be?"

"The single bravest person I've ever met."

As the girl paid for the flowers, Henri caught a glimpse of the face under the hood. He recognized the face immediately. The face of France's greatest living hero, who was the ward of the daughter of what had once been a very highly regarded family of Corsica. Who on the island had managed to earn such an accolade from a girl who once attacked an Angel with nothing but a pair of broken spectacles and won?

* * *

Yves Robillard was a graveyard caretaker. He lived a quiet life tending the graves, often going days or weeks without seeing anyone else during his working hours. Unless there was a funeral scheduled, the only visitors to come by were the occasional mourners. He certainly wasn't expecting to see a celebrity walk into his graveyard. He watched as the girl the media had called Jeanne D'Arc's spiritual successor wandered through the graves, apparently searching for one grave in particular. She stopped at a double headstone, leaving the bouquet of lilies she carried on one side of it.

"It's funny, isn't it," Kirika said to the grave. "I never agreed to honor your last request, but in the end I ended up doing so anyway.

"I don't know what possessed you to entrust your daughter's safety to me after what I did, but because you had the courage to defy Altena, you may have saved the world. If you had given in to Altena's demands, I would never have been able to break free of Les Soldats. The odds that I would still be alive would only be two in three. I might never have gone to Tokyo-3, never become a pilot, and never realized that I still had a family that cared for me. I can't even begin to imagine how differently the last battle would have turned out if it wasn't for things that happened because Noir was there.

"Over the years, I've lost track of how many people I've killed. I can't even recall how many hundreds of people I've killed. But one thing was different about you. Most of the people I've killed show fear, anger, or surprise when death came for them. A few of them were resigned. But you were the only one who looked her death in the eye with a smile, knowing exactly why you were going to die, and accepting that fate with no regrets. I can only hope that I can look back on my life with the same confidence when my end comes."

Kirika turned and headed out of the graveyard. As she passed through the gates, she unzipped her jacket and tossed it into the air, where it was caught by the wind and blown into a tree. Yves grumbled about that. Just because she was a heroine didn't mean that she could litter. But before he retrieved the ladder to deal with the jacket, he looked at the grave the girl had visited. Who was the person who had had such an impact on the life of her own murderess, so as to change her into a hero? He gasped when he recognized the name of a woman who had been very well known before her death ten years before.

**Odette Feyder Bouquet**

**1968-2005**

* * *

Kirika made her way back to the boat where Mireille was waiting, taking care to avoid other people whenever possible. She doubted that the French would ever realize that their efforts to place her on a pedestal was the reason she was planning to never return to their country again once this job was over if she could help it. Fame was something she had been conditioned to avoid for most of her life, and she found hero worshipping to be embarrassing.

But despite that, the original plan she had had when she became a pilot, of getting her face altered surgically and returning to her old profession under a new name, didn't appeal to her anymore. While the absolute anonymity of her former career would get her away from unwanted admirers, it would also return her to the absolute loneliness she dreaded above all else.

She didn't want to return to a life where she didn't dare make a friend for fear that they would be killed by her enemies. She didn't want to return to a life where she could walk through a crowd and still be totally alone. She wanted a life where she had a _home_ , not just a place where she slept. She wanted a life where she could enjoy herself without worrying about potential ambushes around every corner.

It was time for Noir to fade back into the shadows. Kirika wanted to live her own life for a change.

* * *

Kaede Shimizu had been living under an assumed identity for months. She had effectively been placed in a witness protection program even though she didn't have the slightest idea what she had witnessed. Had her life not been in danger, it might have been funny.

It wasn't until after the Battle of Tokyo-3 that anyone had gotten around to explaining to her what the death of her colleagues and the attempt on her own life were really about. She still had trouble believing that she had been sentenced for death because she had inadvertently and unknowingly seen a doomsday weapon during the course of an emergency surgical procedure.

But her long months of hiding were finally over. She had just been informed that the various conspiracies that had tried to kill her were no longer in a position to threaten her. She could return to her old name and her old life. There was only one loose end to tie up: Since she was the only surgeon to have ever removed an S2 organ, the JDA had called on her to perform the procedure a second time.

Kaede wasn't someone who watched the news regularly. So as she scrubbed for surgery, she wondered who she was supposed to be operating on. As a result of this, she was rather surprised when she recognized the girl wheeled into the surgical theater.

"Nice to see you again, Doctor." Chloe said, just before being placed under anesthesia.

* * *

Time passed. The government investigation of the attack on Tokyo-3 concluded. Most of the soldiers were considered too junior to be in a position to question the dubious legality of the orders to attack in the first place. Virtually all of the officers high enough in rank to be in a position to question those orders were dead, making any possible court-martials a moot point. Major Sanchez was not charged with anything as he had gone on record as questioning many of the details of his orders.

But even though none of the surviving soldiers were charged with anything for attacking Tokyo-3 in the first place, that did not get them off the hook for any acts of criminal misconduct committed during the attack. Numerous war crimes, mainly of murdering civilians and/or combatants trying to surrender, had been reported, and verified by NERV's security footage. While a significant number of the perpetrators were later killed in the fighting, over a hundred of the survivors found themselves facing a firing squad.

After much debate, it was decided that Kozo Fuyutsuki would be confirmed as the new Commander of NERV. Not that this promotion meant anything. By the time that the debate ended, SEELE's records had been tracked down, revealing that all of the Angels had been killed. Upon formally assuming command, Fuyutsuki was ordered to decommission the Evangelions and destroy all of the remaining Angel tissue samples, so that they could never be used as weapons of war again. And so, two months after the Battle of Tokyo-3, Chloe, the pilots, and variety of officials from NERV and the international community gathered on the _Over the Rainbow_ to watch the destruction of the remains of the Angels, and with it the official end of the Angel War.

They turned to watch as a series of planes flew over the small island where the unarmored Evangelions and Angelic remnants were laid out. One by one, the planes dropped N2 mines on the island. An hour after the bombardment started, there were no remaining traces of the Angels on the now mostly submerged island. The war was over.

"It's finally over." Shinji said.

Asuka nodded. "Funny, but I just realized. I've spent my entire life fighting this war or training for it. Now that it's over, what do I do with the rest of my life?"

"I suppose I could go back to my old job, but since it's illegal, and everyone knows what I look like, that could be difficult." Chloe added in.

"You have more options than that cousin. Some movie producers have decided that you and the Fourth have set a new standard in action films between the battle footage and what Kensuke recorded at school. I wouldn't be surprised if they didn't try to hire you two. Well, if they knew where Kirika was, anyway."

"I'll have to keep that in mind." Kirika said as she walked up behind them.

Shinji spun around. "Imouto!"

"Where have you been, Fourth Child?" Asuka asked.

"Just tying up a few loose ends."

* * *

After the destruction of the remains of the Angels, the crowds gathered below decks so that the dignitaries could make speeches. Kirika slipped away into a side room during the third speech. Chloe and the pilots followed. There they found Kaji and Mireille moving some crates.

"Why exactly did you want the teams examining the Soldat Manor to send us these crates?" Kaji asked.

"These crates hold the results of the only skill that Chloe and I learned from Altena that had nothing to do with assassination. It seemed appropriate that we use them when the speeches finally end." Kirika answered.

Mireille pried open one of the crates and removed a wine bottle. "This is…" She began.

"Chateau de Soldats Pinot Noir 2013," Chloe answered as she saw the label. "The last vintage Kirika and I helped make before the Trials began."

"Come on, we'll have to hurry to get these all out in time for the toast." Kirika said.

* * *

While some of the dignitaries were surprised by the fact that the victory toast was made with wine instead of champagne, nobody had any complaints about the quality of the beverage. Chloe commented that if all their other career options fell through, they might be able to start up a winery in the GeoFront. With NERV being shut down, there was plenty of room down there, and concept of a totally climate controlled vineyard would make raising the notoriously difficult to cultivate pinot noir grapes a lot easier – as would being able to use labor-saving machinery instead of doing everything by hand.

That evening, as the carrier slowly steamed to a point where all the VIPs could fly back to the mainland and start heading home, Kirika and Shinji stood on the deck, watching the stars.

"Things sure have changed a lot for us, haven't they, imouto?" Shinji asked.

Kirika nodded. "This time last year, you spent most of your time hoping you could go someplace I wasn't in the belief that you could see me, while I was fighting for my life for reasons I didn't understand, with only a gun, a watch, and a fake ID as clues to who I even was. I certainly didn't expect my life to turn out the way it did."

Kirika held her watch in her black gloved hand. Then she pulled out an old student ID and forcibly wedged it inside the watch. She threw the watch into the air and drew her Beretta, shooting at the watch. The bullets struck the watch, causing it to break apart as it fell into the water. As sailors on the deck turned to see why a gun had been fired, Kirika held up her pistol and threw it overboard. Then she stripped off her gloves and did the same with them. Shinji noticed that his sister no longer had black hands and realized exactly what she had just given up for him.

For the first time in over a decade, Kirika Ikari looked at her brother. "I'm home, aniki."

Shinji took his sister in his arms. "Welcome home, imouto."

What would happen next and where they would go from here were questions that they would need to face, but at the moment, Shinji didn't care. His sister was home, and all was right with the world.

* * *

A/N: It's been two and a half years since I started this, but it's finally complete. Personally, I think it came out rather well.

I know a lot of people didn't care for how Rei turned out. I still believe that if Shinji had not decided to involve himself in Rei's life, she would have remained Gendo's loyal servant to the end simply because it would never have occurred to her to be anything else. And when I decided to resurrect and redeem Chloe (Who really got the short end of the stick in canon. She was a very interesting character up until the moment she went insane), I knew I had to have Rei as a villain to face her in a duel of Nephilim. If I ever write another Eva fic (Which I'm not planning to do at present), I'll try to be nicer to Rei in that one.

I originally planned for the story to end Chloe/Kirika, but I decided against it for the reasons mentioned in the chapter. The main differences in that ending would be that Chloe fails to stab Rei, and is forced to defeat her by using the fork on her own S2 organ, causing her to explode, taking Rei with her. At the end of the story, Chloe III wakes up in a hospital to be greeted by her cousin. After Asuka leaves, Chloe receives a bouquet of Alpine Roses (her favorite flower), accompanied with a fork, indicating that Kirika is willing to give the latest Chloe a chance.


End file.
